sheet metal bend order

I'm curious to see if anyone has any light to shed on the Bend Order
functions in SW sheet metal? Appears to be a useless property in both
the new and old sheet metal methods. Any clues?

Matt

 

I have never known that I needed nor desired to do that. I would also be
interested in hearing about a reason to do it.

WT

 

i always thought it was tied to how the part unfolds. it might be
beneficial if animator could tie into bend order and simulate the folding
and unfolding process. kind of like the way exploded views are
auto-magically animated.



to add insult to injury, when using the "Reorder Bends" function (rmb
flat-pattern), it does not update the bend order property of the individual
bends' feature.



also, when editing an individual bend feature, no information is given in
help about this particular bend order property. i guess it's assumed that
Bend Reorder and Bend Order are the same.

 

In days gone by using the "old" sheet metal functionality, it used to
give you a warning if the part intersected itself during folding
operations due to bend order, and you could mess with the order to get
the warning message to go away, but other than that, I haven't found
anything.