NX11 - Best way to make a Flange on a solid body? 2

[Kenja824]

In NX9 there was a flange application that made it very simple. Im not sure if it came with NX9 or if it was something a customer gave us in a toolkit. But all we had to do is select the face of the body we wanted to extend, select the hinge line and type in the radius, angle and length and it would create a flanged solid body.

Just to be clear what I mean by flanged solid body.... if we had a solid body that was 100mm x 50mm x 5mm and we wanted to make it look like a bent plate, we would hit this button, select the end face (5 x 50), the hinge line, then type in a 20mm inside radius, 50mm length, and 90° angle, and it would extend this plate so it looked like a 150mm x 50mm x 5mm plate that was bent at whatever angle we typed in.

THis now seems to be gone in NX11 and I cant seem to find a good way to do this now. A few guys have already asked me about it. So I figured I would ask here what the best way to add a flange to a solid body is?

I have found the flange surface icons but have not been able to make these work for solid bodies. Not sure what I am doing wrong if they work for that.

 

[Kenja824]

Just to clarify, after I posted this, I found someone just replied to another post I had on the old button we used. I am hopeful of getting the old way back for everyone here but in case that fails, I would still be interested in any answers for how others do this.

 

[deedub777]

- Change to the sheet metal application
- Set up material parameters (material thickness, bend radius, etc.)
- Create a tab (the solid body)
- Create the flange (with the required parameters)
This now can be used downstream for manufacture with a flat pattern. Take a look at the attached movie.

 

[Kenja824]

Is there a way to use solid bodies and not sketcher? Very few of the guys here know anything about using sketch and this is just going to be confusing to them. I am sure it will be fine once they learn what they are doing but the optimal answer would be to not have to teach 20 different designers how to do something new.

Plus, this seems to make a sheet body. We dont work with sheet bodies. We work with solid bodies. Thats why I was looking so hard for the flange operation that used to be in modeling.

 

[Kenja824]

Correction....

In working with this, it seems these bodies are more workable than normal sheet bodies. I showed this to one of the designers and he thinks this may be doable. He is going to play with it and check it out.

Thanks for the help.