AutoCAD Inventor :: Curved Sheet Metal Over Spline / Multiple Curves
Jul 11, 2013
How to curve a piece of sheet metal over the outside curved edge of the attached part. I can do it the old fashioned way but was wondering if it could be done in sheet metal which would give me the flat pack automatically (that way there is less chance for errors). There are several of these baffles joined together by a spine and the sheetmetal will eventually go over all of these, and have a few modifications to shape the end profile.
The outer curve is a spline which has changing radius and hence to use a contoured roll would be rather difficult and time consuming (there are also some flat sections at each end of the curves as well).
Autodesk Inventor Professional Student 2013 is the version I'm using.
The part in the attachment was made in catia. The main face is curved in two directions. In my language we call this a "double curved surface" this is possible to generate a flat pattern from in catia. How to do this in inventor?
Can a curved section with bend be applied to sheet metal part.I make extrusion for easier clarity.I am wanting to place the curved section (extrusion for demonstration purpose) with bend in sheet metal part but all created in the sheet metal environment.
I am drawing a fan wheel. The fan blade is curved intersects the shroud, consisting of two cones. I do not know how to trim the blade to the cones. I tried to "split" the blade at the cones and then "delete face" but then the "Go to flat pattern" section on the ribbon is missing. If I suppress the "delete face" feature the "Go to flat pattern" re-appears.
I have a part in which one of the folds needs to be done at assembly and not during manufacturing of the other bends.
Is there a way I can show this so that the manufacturing print sees exactly what they need to do and nothing more but then on the unit assembly the assemblers see that the unfolded tab needs to be folded down?
Many times I see that these types of irregular shapes which comprise of spline curve are created with very less or no dimensions, so I want to know how this spline curve was created and can be controlled, if I want to create it in an exact manner what dimension I should use ?
A collegue asked me about this as he has been given a part to model and the details are for the flat sheet not the finished model. Is this possible in 'sheet metal'? I had a quick play but couldn't work it out. Im used to creating the finished part and 'un-folding' to get the flat pattern.Detail supplied below.
API enhancement/fix in SP1: Cannot create a radius dimension on circular drawing curves projected from spline edges.Does it in some way trying to refer to the issue with nonplanar arcs turning into splines in drawings saved-as AutoCAD .DWG?
Working with sheet metal and laying out a pattern for the cnc and was wondering if there is a way to imprint an extrusion onto the surface instead of cutting it. Mainly this will be used for a marking tool so the line type or layer would need to be different.
I am working on a bin type unit, and am having trouble creating a flange, I am creating the bin in the final product stage, then I will separate into manufacturer components. I am having trouble adding this flange around the top 4 edges of the bin. I need the four corners to meet on a miter 45. I will then rip down each seam and have 4 separate panels.
Is this a bad workflow? Is there a better route? I attached the part in Inventor 2013 format,
Attached are two sheet metal parts that we need to unfold and make them flat for a drawing. We cannot seem to capture the reference A or reference B planes asked for by the unfold command.
Is there a way to get the appearance of perforation on a sheet metal tube without having to create each and every hole? Looking for an appearance to drag onto the surface. Kind of like when you make a part look like it is made of brick. It being just an image on the model surface.
Very thin gauge aluminum sheets with a composite sandwiched between them.
The challenge is, the panels are relatively thick, 3mm or 4mm, but a router is used on the fold lines before bending to cut through all but the outer aluminum. This makes for a very tight bend radius.
So, thick 3 layer material, tight bend with mitered corners. Can Inventor's sheet metal tools handle this?
Can this part be made with sheet metal tools...it will be made from aluminum. I attach the shape made with standard tools and the sheet metal attempt.......how do add the sides in sheet metal.
how incredible it is that Inventor still does not have a functional normal cut option for sheet metal like Solidworks and Solidedge have long had and I agree. I realize that there are the standard workflows like using derive and thicken to get around this problem. However, for those interested, there is a way to make a normal cut (for laser/cnc) directly in the sheet metal part in many cases. It involves using a sketch to split a face and then using the resulting profile for a thicker/cut feature. I'm always interested in any other methods out there for obtaining normal cuts in complex sheet metal (for a clean dxf export). By the way, Autodesk, do you actually not have any plans of ever adding functionality in this area?
I ran the installer, created a sheet metal part and hit rebuild all, it did not create any proeprties, also tried to manually create the properteis then hit rebuild, no go.
I also did a search on my hardrive for the ApplicationPlugins, and placed the sheet metal folder in all of them(there were 3) tried again noto.
The add-in also does not appear in the add-in manager.
Or is there different what to get the flat pattern dimensions in 2013
I have just modelled a part with some faces and tried to convert to sheet metal to have inventor make the bends between the faces. However when trying to convert to sheet metal i get the following error message (Autodesk Inventor Professional Tip) - "This model cannot be converted to Sheet Metal because it contains features that have created multiple bodies. In order to convert to Sheet Metal these features must first be removed."
As the picture show the part only has 1 solid. Even when deleting all features except the "base" face I get the same error message or Tip as Inventor calls it.
I have a sheet metal door with a little bracket that gets welded to the inside lip through a cut-out in the face of the door. (see assembly)
I can't get the cut-out to line up flush with the inside lip of the door, as that is where the brackets gets welded to. the current aseembly is set-up the way I want, but I can't get a flat pattern on the door, becasue of the cut going across the bend.
I have checked off the "cut across bend" in the cut dialogue box, but this leaves a small (~1/32) lip in the cut-out and runs interference in the placement of the bracket.
Inventor Pro Suite 2013 Sean Farr Product Designer at TESInc.ca Inventor Professional 2014-Update 2 - AutoCAD Electrical 2014 Win7-x64 | ASUS P8Z77-V | i7 3770 -3.4 GHz | 32GB RAM | 240GB SSD | nVidia GTX 670 4GB - 320.49
How can I create a sheet metal jog? Like the attached. I used a contor flange to creat this one, but I have to add a jog to an existing part and don't want to have to totally redraw it just to get the jog. I'm hoping you can add it like you can a flange.
I was designing a part which consisted in a circular sheet metal part with a hole in the center, and a bent rectangular radii-oriented section. The second feature is the one I want to give focus in this thread.
Take a circular sheet metal with a diameter of 30 mm and a thickness of 1 mm. Now, to achieve the bent section one would perform - in a workshop or any other equivalent - two parallel slices of about 5 mm in length with a distance from each other of 4 mm. The slice would start in the circumference and end somewhere nearer to the center of the disc, but not parallel to a radius (since its parallel to another slice 4 mm apart as said before). After the slicing was done, one would bend the section between the slices 90 degrees to any of the sides.
Now, in Inventor I couldn't find a way to do this. I couldn't just slice a line through the disc. I worked it around by cutting rectangles of 0.2 mm in width and with the length of the desired slices, and then using the folding command to bend it 90 degrees. Is it possible to perform this so called slices?
I have a dwg file with three sheets in, just default names, I can access sheets 2 and 3 but get the attached errors when trying to access sheet 1 form either sheet 2 or 3
This file was originally created in IV2009 I've had no problems then or with the various conversions of it.
It seems to be memory related so here's the sitrep as for memory 8GB DDR2 RAM, and Virtual Memory set at min of 8192MB and a Max of 16384MB, I did have it set a systems managed but that gave a warning of low virtual memory with almost every drawing file that I opened.
I made a part in sheet metal and used the Cut tool for cut-outs...i tried by using flatten Patern,draw sketch but this did not cut part...is there a more better way of making these cuts?
I have been trying to work out how to make interlocking joints in sheet metal parts. The attached screen shot is the only way I have found to do it in Inventor, but it is a cheat. One of the flanges is a 85˚ bend because if it were 90˚ it would give an error "Flange Body intersects with existing body or self intersects."
I have setup all our Sheet Metal Rules to be all of our stocked in house sheet metals. The sheet metal rules are named like:
ALUM 5052 H32 1/2" (Part Number) ST STEEL T304 3/8" (Part Number) STEEL 44W 1/8" (Part Number) etc.
And each rule has the proper thickness, material, and some standardized bend radius's. I've done this to introduce more uniformity in our designs, and to also allow the designer to put as much information into the model as possible, so that if someone else does the drawings, there is no question as to which material is used.
I now want to bring in the Sheet Metal Rule name into the drawing automatically. I can't seem to find a way to reference the Sheet Metal Rule directly from the drawing. What I need to do is pick a standard field in the i Properties (I used Stock Number), and put in =<Sheet Metal Rule> so that now the Stock Number references the Sheet Metal Rule, and then in the drawing I can just reference the Stock Number, and it will come in.
I don't like having to use the Stock Number as a middle man though, as none of our existing models are setup like this. Is it possible to reference Sheet Metal Rule in the drawing without having to use another field as a placeholder for the information?
I recently had an issue in adding flanges to a sheet metal part. The thread for that can be seen here:
[URL].......
The problem I am having now is with the size of the part. I need the linear distance from the bottom edge of a flange to match the inner diameter of my part. As you can see, this is not the case as it stands right now.
I am looking for a solid way of finding the Thickness parameter of a sheet metal part. I have tried two ways so far:
1. oCompDef.Parameters.Item(Thickness)
This works but if Inventor is installed with a different language pack like German for instance then it fails
2. oCompDef.Parameters.Item(1).Value
This also works but if the user started the part with a normal part template and then converts the part to a sheet metal part down the line, then this method fails.
Is there a reason a sheet metal "cut" isn't an option for the automated centerlines tool? Am I overlooking something? When I make holes in sheet metal parts, I draw the circle then "cut" it into the sheet metal. For some reason I can't find how to give those automatic centerlines on drawings.
