Sheet Metal Thicken

When defining a base feature, is it really necessary to use the
"Thicken" command to add material thickness to your sheet metal wall
while you are still in Sketcher mode when a option to define Thickness
exists on as part of the "Create Unattached Extruded Wall" command?

 

: When defining a base feature, is it really necessary to use the
: "Thicken" command to add material thickness to your sheet metal wall
: while you are still in Sketcher mode when a option to define Thickness
: exists on as part of the "Create Unattached Extruded Wall" command?

Seems like there are two or three questions here:
* Can you make the base feature an unattached wall? No, unattached walls are
secondary walls created as unattached so that they can be merged with the base or
other secondary walls, often to 'fill in' gaps.

* Do extruded walls have to be thickened in sketcher? No, not when created as
secondary walls; there they take their thickness from the geometry they are
attaching to. Thickening in sketcher is used, whether on primary or secondary
walls to achieve demensioning to the inside surface of a sheetmetal bend, the
inside bend radius. This is because this radius is formed by hard tooling and has
to be incorporated into that tooling. This can be accomplished by drawing the
inside radius and adding thickness to the outside of the part. The exception
occurs when inflection changes direction, where inside becomes outside.

David Janes