How to thicken sheetmetal in the sketch?

[GhostTX]

Hi all,

Tried to do a search but couldn't find this particular question, so apologies if its been asked before.

I'm totally new to SolidWorks, have been driving Pro/E for 8 years though. In sheetmetal mode, is there a way to thicken the sketch? I need some controlling dimensions from the outside edge on one form to an inside edge of another form on the same continuous piece of metal. Ergo, I need SWs to thicken the 1 line sketch so that I can place these dimensions. Also, I'd like to do this so I can have varing radii on the bends, independent of the bend radius setting and thickness of the part.

Thanks!

 

[bvanhiel]

While in sketch mode you can offset the sketch entities by the sheetmetal thickness and then toggle them to construction curves to reference from. To me this is one of the fundametal differences between Pro/E and SW sketch: in SW you can make any entity into a construction entity, whereas in Pro/E you can only do circles and lines.

-b

 

[StefanHamminga]

In addition to that, after you have created the actual sheetmetal feature you can edit your sketch, rightclick the dimension for the offset and click "link valule". In the pulldown box you can select "thickness" now. This way your sketch will update your sheetmetal feature and the other way around. Much less error prone.

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student