SOLID BODIES (BASE)

[T.Adams]

I need help changing solids into working sheetmetal parts that can be manipulated such as flat patterns.  I am getting base models with flanges and features as one solid that i can not change and use like i need.  How do i change one of these solid bodies into a working sheet metal part?

[jletcher]

What version and can you post the part so we can take a look can't help if we don't know what it is or looks like..

[T.Adams]

Inventor 2012 and they are simple parts with only one flange but woulde be nice to flatten out instead of doing all the math to try to get a flat pattern.

[JDMather]

Does it have bends?

Did you click Convert to Sheet Metal?

Did you set the sheet metal style to the part thickness.

Is it a valid uniform thickness part?
Can you attach a picture here?

Can you attach the ipt file here?

[Yijiang.Cai]

If you could provide dataset or image, it should be better to figure out the issue. Based on the details you provided, you should create the multi solids and would like to convert it to sheet metal. But current Inventor does not support multil solids in sheet metal environment. So I recommend you to derive this multi solids base to parts, and every part has one solid, then the part can be converted to sheet metal. So that you could take downstream workflow in sheet metal environment.