Show and bent rod as a flat part.

[metalwillow]

Basically I have and guide rod the needs to be bent and rolled in a couple places. Does any one now how to show the flat profile?

 

[fcsuper]

You may be able to start in the straigh and use flex, though i'm not sure how accurate the results will be. You may have to just do the math and create configurations with the different shapes.

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

 

[JMirisola]

Depending on the complexity, you may be able to create it as a sheetmetal part.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP, Certified DriveWorks AE

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

First question ... do you really need to show the unbent part?
What purpose would it serve?

In sheet metal, start with a square bar where the width equals the material thickness, apply the bends, and then add fillets to each edge to create the round. The flat pattern config would have the fillets suppressed.

 

[smcadman]

I do not use the sheet metal tool for this, I use a cheat instead. I make a second config and I change the degrees to 179.9 which looks flat but really isn't. Sometimes you have to use less of an angle such as 179.8. Note the tangent lines are off so the breaks don't show on the flat pattern.

By the way, this is a 3D line and a 2D line is easier if your part allows it.


See PDF:

http://www.paul-flores.com/temp_files/3D_wire_sample.pdf

And here are the 2008 files to see the cheat:

http://www.paul-flores.com/temp_files/3D_wire_sample.zip

Flores