topic Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features! in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

excitive — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 06:59:30 GMT

I am on the Experience Design team for Fusion 360, and I would like to share an update about a new feature we have been working on. It adds new capabilities in the versatile set of Sheet Metal commands of Fusion 360.

Currently, the primary way of creating Sheet Metal parts in Fusion 360 is by creating flanges, which requires you to pull the edges off of a sheet and set parameters to get it to desired shape. With this new command - Bend, you will be able to easily bend the existing material along a sketch line. It will be a great aid for those who need to bring in an existing flat pattern in formats like DXF and create sheet metal components out of it.

Following animation gives a sneak peek into the easy workflow for Bend:

Bend in action

As you can see above, we have taken extra care to make the experience as simple as possible. For example, the bend side - i.e. which side of the bend line will be bent v/s which will remain stationary - is determined automatically depending on where the user clicks on the body. The side where you click remains fixed and the other side bends.

As soon as a face is picked, the selection automatically moves to next item and Fusion waits for the bend line to be clicked. This means that once you have a sheet metal body and bend lines ready, it will take only four clicks to create a bend.

Another cool thing about this command is how smart it is. The bend lines need not precisely touch the edges of the face. Our developers have worked hard to make it smart enough that even if the bend line is partially covering the face, it understand whether to bend it or not. This is particularly useful in DXF imports where coordinate precision is not guaranteed.

Stress Test

Additional options are provided for direction (up or down) and angle. Bend also takes care of creating necessary bend reliefs, which you can disable if necessary. Override mechanisms will let you alter certain properties of sheet metal rules.

Bend command UI

We are super excited to see what our customers do with this. Do you think this will be a good addition to Sheet Metal features in Fusion 360? What improvements should we make in upcoming updates? Please feel free to share your comments and ideas, with any feedback once you have played with it.

Bend comes out soon in the March 2019 update of Fusion 360.

Cheers!

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

excitive — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 04:20:50 GMT

UPDATE

Bend is pushed to Fusion 360 update. Mac App Store user should get it soon.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 14:07:38 GMT

File>Export and then Attach *.f3d example here illustrating use of this new tool.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 10:08:04 GMT

How about the part from your video above?

Or the part from the “What’s New” video?

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

chrisplyler — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 12:31:12 GMT

I made one!

Here you go, @TheCADWhisperer .

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

chrisplyler — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 12:37:55 GMT

I found out something...

If you're going to put in slots, as I did, make sure they go far enough across your intended bend line such that the slot goes fully through the bend arc, or else the intended flange in between the slots won't get recognized as something that can be bent on its own.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 12:52:07 GMT

@chrisplyler wrote:

I made one!

I am waiting on an Autodesk exemplar file.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

chrisplyler — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 12:55:50 GMT

Oh, sorry then.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Thu, 14 Mar 2019 10:49:37 GMT

Pinging @excitive - where did you go?

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 11:17:10 GMT

@excitive

Does Autodesk have a set of QC test files for validating this tool?

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 14:04:05 GMT

Bump!

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

chrisplyler — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 17:43:51 GMT

Bump is right, right? Now the seeming hesitation has me wanting a response too!

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

excitive — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 03:10:47 GMT

Hi Folks!

Sorry for taking my time with this, this was an internal model that was not made by me and hence I needed to obtain the permission to share it.

Here you go, I have attached the 3D model as well as the flat sketch for you to play with.

I'm working on the What's New model. Regarding the internal testing models, I'm not sure I can share them, but you can always look at Samples project that comes with Fusion 360, or visit the gallery that'll have many models generously shared by other users.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

excitive — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 03:12:22 GMT

Sketch:

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 11:24:03 GMT

@excitive wrote:

Hope this helps.

This thread announces new tool "Bend" in sheet metal. I requested an exemplar. The file that you Attached does not include any Bend features in the Timeline?

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 11:43:00 GMT

Bump.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

chrisplyler — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:35:01 GMT

This is starting to get pretty funny.

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

excitive — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 16:08:26 GMT

Apologies, there have been few versions of this part file and apparently I attached an earlier version. The correct one is attached which has only Bend features from the same DXF I attached earlier and results into the exact same design.

This makes me curious, what sparks this extraordinary interest in this specific part?

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

TheCADWhisperer — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:08:50 GMT

I cannot open this file.

Anyone else experiencing issue with opening the file?

Re: Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

excitive — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:32:10 GMT

Please make sure Fusion is updated and try with this attached file.