Sheet metal to MESH issue

[hydroeon]

Greetings fellow engineers

I have noticed that when a sheet metal part has flanges on it the sheet metal doesn't fold back with the pattern (extrude cut) applied over the entire sheet. For example, should one take a honeycomb mesh and try to form it to fit a car grille..it wont.

Any ideas how to work around this. My usual work flow is as follows;

1: Create a sheet metal part (with folds etc), flatten...
2: Extrude cut the desired pattern
3: fold
4: doesn't work

Any help appreciated

 

[JMirisola]

Are you flattening or unfolding? When you say "doesn't work", what's the error message?
I'm able to get it to work just fine:

Create base flange with bends.
Unfold.
Create 'Mesh'
Fold


Jeff Mirisola, CSWP, Certified DriveWorks AE
CAD Administrator, Ultimate Survival Technologies
My Blog

 

[ArtemTat]

It happens since the Extruded-Cut Feature added after the sheet metal features in the Design Tree.

You should drag the feature above the sheet metal flattened pattern feature in the Feature Manager Design Tree.

Note do not use the flattened sheet metal face as a reference entity for sketch for the cut since in folded state this face can be relocated. It is better to use reference planes instead.

Artem Taturevich
CSWP

 

[JMirisola]

ArtemTat,
If you create the part as a sheet metal part from the beginning, your method won't work. It has to be done in an unfold/cut/fold method.
Also, where it's mesh, and probably created using a linear pattern, I would use the face to reference off of. With minimal adjustment to distance and quantity (assuming one didn't use formulas), the pattern will follow should you change the size of the part.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP, Certified DriveWorks AE
CAD Administrator, Ultimate Survival Technologies
My Blog

 

[hydroeon]

..."the part contains features that cannot be unbent"...

is the error that I get. I've tried the above methods and don't understand why Solidworks isn't in the mood today.

Perhaps this pic would be a give-away.

Formulas are great if you get them right though.

In addition I've tried:
1: increasing the bend radius (flange)
2: making holes larger/smaller

 

[ArtemTat]

Probably you should use Flatten/Unflatten feature instead of Fold/Unfold. And make the mesh while the sheet metal is flattened.

Artem Taturevich
CSWP

 

[AnnaWood]

hydroeon,

It appears you have a fillet in the corners of your base. That would make for a non-uniform thickness part. Maybe that is what SW is having trouble with.

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2009 SP3.0, Windows 7 RC1

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[hydroeon]

the pic is of the part that had been unfolded. The flatten feature is not designed for this purpose, but I've tried it just in case and it didn't work.

SOLVED! There were actually two issues:

1: the were a few circles in the sketch that were not in constant with the metal part.

2: once the above was fixed, soldworks gave another error about the bend radius being too small

Once the two issues were addressed, it worked.

Thanks everyone

 

[AnnaWood]

Can you post the part if you can't get it sorted?

I am sure you are using the Fold/Unfold commands, but just in case not.

See attached....

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2009 SP3.0, Windows 7 RC1

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[hydroeon]

Thanks Anna but the problem was solved in the above post

PS - 120gb SSD, mmmmm......

 

[DesignerGuy16]

It won't work even as an unfold, cut, fold setup. I've tried. =D

I wanted to do the same with some wire mesh material for a guard, but ended up just keeping the part transparent in the model, and show hidden behind it in the drawing.

For some reason solidworks stutters when trying to refold the cuts through the bend areas. You could show it in the flat for cosmetic purposes, but doesn't do a whole lot of good.

James Spisich
Design Engineer, CSWP

 

[JMirisola]

It depends on the complexity. I have no problems with a few bends, but if you start doing some funktified bends, it'll puke.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP, Certified DriveWorks AE
CAD Administrator, Ultimate Survival Technologies
My Blog

 

[mjcole]

Anna,

I love the fact that you use an ATI card as opposed to the way too overrated nVidia cards.

Michael

 

[AnnaWood]

mjcole,

I am a recent convert to considering ATI FirePro's. In the past I would have never considered them.

http://www.solidmuse.com/2009/05/ati-firepro-video-cards-a-second-look.html

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2009 SP3.0, Windows 7 RC1

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[hydroeon]

I thought everyone already knew that the issue with "ATi" cards i.e. AMD, is that the drivers are of poor "quality" due to the software developer funding and support.

I've had a quadro 5600 for some time now and all these FireGL benchmark performance figures are pointless if the software one is using doesn't support AMD's drivers..

Although all of this is off topic here