How can I model this sheet metal?

[tluxon]

We have a number of sheet metal parts that have etched "crease" reliefs for bending. An example would be a .050 thick sheet of SST with .025 deep grooves etched in it to "steer" the bend for hand bending.

We have fairly tight tolerances to work within (±.010) considering these are bent by hand, so I'm wanting to model an accurate flat pattern AND have a folded view to display dimensions required after hand bending. Since SolidWorks doesn't allow sheet metal to have these groooves, what are some simple ways (if any) to deal with this?

Thanks,

Tim

 

[APPENG]

Tim I have had to "fake" sheet metal functionality quite a bit in solidworks and it very capable of doing that. But this requires that you be sneaky and creative about it. I have taken parts and created configurations showing them in the flat, and bent.

A suggestion would be to create a part that shows your parts bent and flattnened as you have now without the embossed bend guides. make a new configuration called FLAT then unsuppress the flat pattern showing your parts in the flat form. Now where the bend lines are you can cut in your embosses by using a blind extrude cut to whatever depth they need to be. Now switch back to your default configuration and this will show the part in its bent shape.

When in the drawing instead of showing the flat patten normal flat pattern in the drawing view, create a view and have that view reference the "FLAT" configuration we created manually, and select the appropriate view perspective (i.e top,front,right)

The emosses will be suppressed in the default configuration so they will not appear there.

That should solve your problem.

I can mail you an example if you need.

Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com

 

[tluxon]

Yes - that's how I've always had to do it as well. The only difference is that I do a sheet metal part at the minimum thickness to reflect the actual dimensional effect of bending. Then, using my "Base Flange", I "cut out" the bent features and re-model the part with "profile" extrusions in the formed configuration.

I know it would be tough because of all the possible complex variations, but I sure hope SW is working on being able to "bend" more than just single-thickness geometries.

Tim

 

[APPENG]

Well Tim,

Remember that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, if you feel the need, by all means submit an enhancement request... the more popular the request...the higher the priority of getting it in the next release! Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com