Sheet Metal Help

Discussion in 'SolidWorks' started by George, Feb 7, 2005.

  1. George

    George Guest

    Although I have been using Solidworks for many years, I haven't done
    anything with the sheet metal functions. I'm hoping someone could give
    a few pointers for getting started here.

    I want to draw up a formed & a flat pattern of a .005 thk sheet of
    metal that would be formed around a mandrel with a slight overlap which
    would then be spot welded together.
    Normally I would just draw up two seperate parts and be done with it.
    However, I'm trying to learn more and do things the correct way.

    Could someone help me get started here? Do I create the formed
    pattern, then flatten it? If so how? If not... How do I bend the flat
    pattern?

    TIA
     
    George, Feb 7, 2005
    #1
  2. George

    George Guest

    Thanks for the website, quite a few examples there.

    The problem I was having was how to tell SWX that my part was a sheet
    metal part... I found a post from last year here from "Alex" that
    explained it step by step.

    I created a cross-sectional sketch, extruded it as a thin feature.
    Then once I inserted a bend magically I had a sheet metal part which I
    can play with until I get it right.

    Thanks John, Thanks Alex ;-)
     
    George, Feb 8, 2005
    #2
  3. Or, sometimes you want to tell it right up front that it's a sheetmetal
    part. To do that, start a sketch and then hit the Base-flange button. This
    inserts the sheetmetal feature at the beginning.

    Other times you will want to do more modeling and then tell it to make it
    sheetmetal - just depends on the situation.

    WT
     
    Wayne Tiffany, Feb 8, 2005
    #3
  4. George

    CS Guest

    In general If most of the bends are 90 degrees I use the method Wayne
    pointed out. If there are more bends that are not 90 I would probably go
    with the method John mentioned.

    Corey
     
    CS, Feb 8, 2005
    #4
  5. George

    kb Guest

    kb, Feb 8, 2005
    #5
  6. Or, sometimes you want to tell it right up front that it's a
    sheetmetal
    If I could add my two cents here too . . .

    Both work nicely. If the insert-bends method is used, it's good to
    insert-bends immediately after the first feature and roll back to add
    more features as needed. When doing this, two major advantages are
    achieved:

    1 - Link to thickness is immediately active once bends are inserted.

    2 - Unfoldability can be validated directly after each feature is
    added.

    Personally, I do about 90% of all my "real(production)" sheet metal
    parts using Insert-Bends because the modleing methods for Base-Flange
    are a bit weak for what I like to do.

    Both work and get a good result, but if using insert-bends, do it early
    and life will be better.

    Regards,

    SMA
     
    Sean-Michael Adams, Feb 13, 2005
    #6
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