SolidWorks Sheetmetal

1
SolidWorks Sheetmetal

• By Matt Lombard
• For CVSWUG meeting October 20, 2005
• Portions borrowed from Mike Sabochecks
  sheetmetal presentation

2
Sheetmetal Rules

• Sheetmetal work in SolidWorks requires that you
  remember a couple rules
• Parts have a constant thickness
• Thickness faces are always perpendicular to the
  bend faces (material is never sheared at an
  angle)
• The bend faces are limited to cylindrical,
  planar, conical shapes
• The exceptions are form tools and Lofted Bends

3
Contest

• The next 6 slides show examples of Sheet Metal
  Parts
• Determine whether or not the part can be
  flattened with the reason why.
• First correct answer wins a Prize.

4
The Flatten Test 1

• Can it be flattened Yes or No?
• Why?? Or Why not??

Ans. No, Sphere
5
The Flatten Test 2

• Can it be flattened Yes or No?
• Why?? Or Why not??

Ans. No, Partial Torus
6
The Flatten Test 3
Can it be flattened Yes or No? Why?? Or Why
not??

• Ans. Yes, all planes and cylinders

7
The Flatten Test 4
Can it be flattened Yes or No? Why?? Or Why
not??
Ans. Yes, all planes and cylinders
8
The Flatten Test 5
Can it be flattened Yes or No? Why?? Or Why
not??
Ans. Yes, All cones
9
The Flatten Test 6
Can it be flattened Yes or No? Why?? Or Why
not??

• Ans. No, Spline geometry. Where??

10
Sheetmetal Functions
Insert Bends Flatten Bends No Bends Rip Base
Flange / Tab Miter Flange Fold Unfold Sketched
Bends Edge Flange Closed Corner Hem Break / Trim
Corner Jog Lofted Bend
New School
Old School
11
New School vs Old School

• There are two basic methods SolidWorks sheetmetal
  can be used
• Model the part using regular SolidWorks functions
  like extrude, revolve, etc.
• This is Old School
• Generally used only for imported parts and rolled
  parts
• Start with an open sketch and a Base Flange
  feature
• This is New School
• Much more powerful
• Way more options

12
New School vs Old School
If youre new to SolidWorks (since, say 2001),
you may not realize there was an old way. It
used to be the Old School way was the only way to
model sheetmetal parts in Solidworks. The old
way works, but it is very limited and you have to
constantly mess with feature order to get it to
work right. You should use the newer methods by
default.
13
Base Flange
Base Flange requires an open sketch
14
Edge Flange

• Select an edge, hit the button, pull the flange
• Flange Length and Position buttons are self
  explanatory
• Offset allowsyou to create adogleg flange
• You can also change the angleof the flange

15
Edge Flange
Edit Flange Profile allows you to change the
sketch of the flange and alter the shape
16
Miter Flange
Miter Flange requires an open sketch on the edge
of the part
Sketch
Propagate to tangent
Allowance for flattening
17
Fold / Unfold
To put a feature across a bend, unfold the bend,
put in the feature, then fold it again
Use offset entities to make slots!
Collect finds all the unfolded bends
Select face to remain stationary
18
Tab
There are no settings for the Tab function, it
just adds a tab to the sketch face
19
Sketched Bend
Draw a line all the way across the part Dont
cross bend lines Line must go all the way
across Control bend angle and direction Black dot
selects stationary face
20
Jog
Like a double sketched bend on steroids Allows
you to keep the original length of the tab or add
material as it jogs
21
Hems
Buttons and dimensions should be self
explanatory Way cool.
22
Corner Break
Chamfers or rounds sharp outside corners Puts
you into a selection filter model to pick short
edges across the thickness and bend
faces Selecting a face breaks all corners on face
23
Forming Tools
Forming tools drag and drop from the Design
Library Forming tools maintain a constant
thickness (they may add mass to the part) Red
faces create holes in the part Only works on
sheetmetal parts
(Use Indent, or Deform Surface Push for
non-sheetmetal parts)
24
Forming Tool Trix
Here are a couple of things that youre not
supposed to do with forming tools (examples on
my website)
Form across bends
Gussets
25
Forming Tool Trix
For other things that forming tools cant do, use
the new Flex tool in SW2005 for sheetmetal and
non-sheetmetal parts
26
Lofted Bend
Lofted Bend is meant to make a looks like
transition from one shape to another. This does
not strictly adhere to regular sheetmetal
industry practice for parts like this
27
Lofted Bend
Lofted Bend can also be used to do all sorts of
things you shouldnt do with sheetmetal
and yes, these can all be flattened out
28
Old School
Chamfers or rounds sharp outside corners
Rip corners
Insert bends
Build box
shell
Flatten
29
Old School
Old school is very order dependent New school has
a suppressed feature that remains on the bottom
of the tree
30
Finer Points

• How does SW handle bend allowances?
• K Factor
• Bend Allowance
• Bend Deduction
• Bend Table
• A very good mathematical description of how SW
  handles bend allowances is available as a
  Knowledge Base article on the SW website.

31
Finer Points

• How does SW handle bend reliefs?
• Tear zero thickness cut
• Rectangular default depth is half of thickness
• Obround full round cut
• These settings are kept in the Sheetmetal feature
  in the tree.

32
Finer Points
Sheetmetal automatically creates a link value
called thickness, which allows the thickness of
the entire part to be changed at once
Link Value symbol
33
More Info

• www.sheetmetaldesign.com from Sean Adams
• www.engineersedge.com all sorts of Technical info
• www.sme.org Society of Manufacturing Engineers
• www.eng-tips.com Technical Moderated Groups
• www.sheetmetalworld.com Tons of Sheet Metal info
• www.trimech.com Tech Newsletter
• www.solidworks.com/swexpress/index.cfm SolidWorks
  Express Newsletter