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Sheetmetal Conundrum

Sheetmetal Conundrum

Sheetmetal Conundrum

(OP)
I posted this on the SolidWorks forums yesterday and I got to thinking that I would like to see if the folks here on Eng-Tips may have some ideas for me, being that you all are a pretty knowledgable group of SW users.

I have an interesting problem that I am a bit stumped on what may be happening.

http://www.acrodesigns.com/SolidWorks/SolidWorksForum/Carrier_Patterns.zip

At the link above I have two sldprt files of some typical carriers we design and manufacture. They are the same style part, but with different cavity designs for the respective packages that will go in the carriers.

On one of the carriers (204873) I can pattern/combine a body to create a complete carrier. The other (204831) will not let me pattern the body. (See the last few features in each file where I break out two separate bodies)

I am trying to understand why one works and the other doesn't. From near as I can tell they are both set up the same. It appears there is something deep in the file that is not letting me create the pattern.

I am wondering if anyone may be able to offer me some insight. I am hoping to be able to consistently design our downset carriers with the techniques used in 204873. This technique saves a bunch of jog features when creating the vertical downsets. Especially important on a 10 up cavity configuration. That would be 20 jog features.

You will notice a few configurations in the files; these are set up this way to allow me to create the tooling when we get the order for these parts.

I am hoping someone may see the error in my ways.... smile

One thing one of the users on the SolidWorks forums was able to figure out is if you insert carrier 204831 into a sldprt file you can then pattern the cavity body.  This is a good work around but I would like to know if there is some other magic to be found.... smile

Cheers,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse
http://www.phxswug.com

RE: Sheetmetal Conundrum

I think the problem is with the cut to seperate the bodies. You cannot pattern a sheetmetal body and I think in your working part SW marked the correct body as body1 (the sheetmetal body), in the failing part your cavity body is marked as the sheetmetal body.

I think a split feature offers more control over which body is #1, I'll give that a try for you.

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
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