make a real sheet metal box

[gnunesjr]

I want to use Inventor to make a real sheet metal box. This box has a bottom, four sides, and folded over to the inside flanges along the four edges. Very standard.

If I design from a flat sheet, the piece has a cross shape, with little 45 degree cuts at the corners of the cross arms so that when you fold in the edge flanges they don't interfere.

I'm sure Inventor can do this, but I'm still climbing that learning curve... It clearly knows about the problem from a general point of view, because it has a 3-fold corner tool, and this is a three fold corner, except that one of the folds is a seam.

What I did:
1. Make a face (the bottom of my box).
2. Make four flanges for the sides of my box.
3. Apply the corner seam tool to try and fool Inventor into treating the box corners as bends.
4. Make the final lip flanges and get an error about self intersecting parts...
5. Make a face. 😠

[JDMather]

Zip and attach what you have so far.
Please indicate what release of Inventor you are using.

[mcgyvr]

Here is one in INV2009.
Very basic just showing the concept.
You can modify the gaps accordingly.

[gnunesjr]

Version 2008

[gnunesjr]

I can see the preview, which looks exactly as I require.

Can you re-post in INV2008 format?

(2008 is not yet half over....Your having INV2009 seems so unfair!)

[mcgyvr]

can't post in 2008 but I will tell you what to do..
When you are making your last flanges that intersect, just expand the options (>> button in the bottom right) in the flange dialog box and make their "width" small enough so they don't collide. then use the corner seam tool to make the 45 deg angles automatically

[JDMather]

I thought that was a bit too much work.
r2008 format - pull down End of Folded marker.

[gnunesjr]

It's a thing of beauty.

Thank you so much!

[JDMather]

Of course you will need to do it over as I did it in edu version.
You probably need to increase the clearance as I only left about .005" (Thickness/16)