I'm trying to figure out how to get inventor to take a sheet metal spiral and flatten it out to create a flat pattern. Anyone have any suggestions? There are 3 seperate peices to this and need to creat patterns for each for fabrication.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by S_May. Go to Solution.
Solved by S_May. Go to Solution.
an assembly file by itself is useless, you will need to attach any part files related to this assy.
Try this method of creating the parts. Create a line, coil to a surface, thicken to get your solid body. Convert to a Sheet-Metal part, set the correct thickness in the Sheet-Metal set-up, and the part will flatten. Not sure how it will work on the angled item. You can't do 360 deg or rotation as you may end up with a self intersecting flat pattern.
That works for the vertical peice on the outside, but not the two inside ones. Take a look at attached file, still will not flatten this one.
And also I'm not sure what I did differently, but when i tried what you suggested, it didn't work for me...
You might have tried the flat pattern before you set up the thickness in the Sheet-Metal module. I went back to the folded item, deleted the flat pattern and created the flat pattern without any problems.
The flat floor portion is just a bunch of circles OD and ID with a cut from the outside to the inside. The sloped side I think is outside of Inventor. There are 3rd party add-in's that should be able to handle that type of bend/roll.
What exactly do u mean by 3rd party add-ons? Is there something out there to create these patterns? Would really like to be able to make patterns to make spirals. I tried using a cone and triangulating the slope and it worked with paper, but when I went to make it out of sheet metal was just a disaster!! So any other help would be greatly appreciated.
They are stand-alone software that works with Inventor files.
I have use SPI sheet metal software before and works great. And I do know it will do Strakes for stacks.
A strake is a spiral sheet metal used to help tall stacks.