I have no formal training on sheet metal in Inventor. I'll walk you through what I've done and what I'm after.
My first piece was at the top transition of my model. I couldn't remember how to extrude from/to multiple surfaces so I created a single piece, mirrored, mirrored, and then joined to create a single extrusion with compound miters on both ends. I then converted it to a sheet metal part and added bends. I set the sheet metal standard to 1/8" aluminum to match my part. It didn't go exactly as planned but I got my end fabs mostly correct and bends in place. For some reason there's a funky triangular excess of material that didn't get bent.
The next stop was to add the sill transition pieces. Due to the two different angles of my skylight the elevation requires two different shapes. I made sure the faces aligned to create a proper water trough. The confusing part was trying to once again extrude to multiple surfaces. The bottom and top flanges of each shape ideally would notch around the other shape to create a nice assembly to seal up. Right now I have holes.
The last piece, and in my opinion the most complicated, will be the hip joint. I've created the shape of the brake metal. How I'm going to get from that sketch of the shape to a brake metal extrusion that goes from a plane at one end to multiple surfaces at the other end I have no idea.
Any advice on how to achieve my goals would be appreciated.
Any general sheet metal advice would be appreciated.
And if you see any redundancies or areas of opportunity for improvement in my model tear it apart as well. I'd love to improve. This model took me roughly 8 hours and I still haven't added any shear blocks, fasteners, or anchors.
Inventor 2012
And I realize now that my part is 2.5mb after pulling the end of part from bottom to top of the tree. I guess that means I can't upload it here. Not sure what good the assembly file will do without it. I can provide images if that would help.
