Sheet Metal Help

Although I have been using Solidworks for many years, I haven't done
anything with the sheet metal functions. I'm hoping someone could give
a few pointers for getting started here.

I want to draw up a formed & a flat pattern of a .005 thk sheet of
metal that would be formed around a mandrel with a slight overlap which
would then be spot welded together.
Normally I would just draw up two seperate parts and be done with it.
However, I'm trying to learn more and do things the correct way.

Could someone help me get started here? Do I create the formed
pattern, then flatten it? If so how? If not... How do I bend the flat
pattern?

TIA

 

Thanks for the website, quite a few examples there.

The problem I was having was how to tell SWX that my part was a sheet
metal part... I found a post from last year here from "Alex" that
explained it step by step.

I created a cross-sectional sketch, extruded it as a thin feature.
Then once I inserted a bend magically I had a sheet metal part which I
can play with until I get it right.

Thanks John, Thanks Alex ;-)

 

Or, sometimes you want to tell it right up front that it's a sheetmetal
part. To do that, start a sketch and then hit the Base-flange button. This
inserts the sheetmetal feature at the beginning.

Other times you will want to do more modeling and then tell it to make it
sheetmetal - just depends on the situation.

WT

 

In general If most of the bends are 90 degrees I use the method Wayne
pointed out. If there are more bends that are not 90 I would probably go
with the method John mentioned.

Corey

 

for help with overlap, search for "sheetmetal overlap" @
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.cad.solidworks

 

Or, sometimes you want to tell it right up front that it's a
sheetmetal

If I could add my two cents here too . . .

Both work nicely. If the insert-bends method is used, it's good to
insert-bends immediately after the first feature and roll back to add
more features as needed. When doing this, two major advantages are
achieved:

1 - Link to thickness is immediately active once bends are inserted.

2 - Unfoldability can be validated directly after each feature is
added.

Personally, I do about 90% of all my "real(production)" sheet metal
parts using Insert-Bends because the modleing methods for Base-Flange
are a bit weak for what I like to do.

Both work and get a good result, but if using insert-bends, do it early
and life will be better.

Regards,

SMA