SolidWorks

Sheetmetal

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

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

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.

The Flatten Test #1

Can it be flattened: Yes or

No?
Why?? Or Why not??
Ans. = No, Sphere

The Flatten Test #2

Can it be flattened: Yes or

No?
Why?? Or Why not??
Ans. = No, Partial Torus

The Flatten Test 3#

Can it be flattened: Yes or No?

Why?? Or Why not??
Ans. = Yes, all planes and
cylinders

The Flatten Test #4

Can it be flattened: Yes or No?

Why?? Or Why not??
Ans. = Yes, all planes and
cylinders

The Flatten Test #5

Can it be flattened: Yes or No?

Why?? Or Why not??
Ans. = Yes, All cones

The Flatten Test #6

Can it be flattened: Yes or No?

Why?? Or Why not??
Ans. = No, Spline geometry.
Where??

Lofted Bend

Jog

Break / Trim Corner

Hem

Closed Corner

Edge Flange

Sketched Bends

Old School

Unfold

Fold

Miter Flange

Base Flange / Tab

Rip

No Bends

Flatten Bends

Insert Bends

Sheetmetal Functions
New School

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

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.

Base Flange
Base Flange requires an open sketch

Edge Flange
Select an edge, hit the button, pull the flange
Flange Length and Position buttons are self
explanatory
Offset allows
you to create a
dogleg flange
You can also
change the angle
of the flange

Edge Flange
Edit Flange Profile allows you to change the sketch
of the flange and alter the shape

Miter Flange
Miter Flange requires an open sketch on the edge of
the part
Sketch

Propagate to
tangent
Allowance for
flattening

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!
Select face to remain
stationary

Collect finds all the

unfolded bends

Tab
There are no settings for the Tab function, it just
adds a tab to the sketch face

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

Jog
Like a double sketched bend on steroids
Allows you to keep the original length of the tab or add material
as it jogs

Hems
Buttons and dimensions should be self explanatory
Way cool.

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

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 nonsheetmetal parts)

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

Forming Tool Trix

For other things that forming tools cant do, use the
new Flex tool in SW2005 for sheetmetal and nonsheetmetal parts

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

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

Old School
Chamfers or rounds sharp outside corners

Build box

shell

Rip
corners

Insert
bends

Flatten

Old School
Old school is very order dependent
New school has a suppressed feature that remains
on the bottom of the tree

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.

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.

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

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