topic Orientation of Flat Pattern in Fusion Support Forum

Orientation of Flat Pattern

chris7XW6D — Thu, 14 May 2020 23:26:02 GMT

Seems crazy to me this has to be so complicated. Maybe I'm missing something.

I have a simple sheet metal part. It's a sketch, then a sheet metal "extrude". It's worthless, really, unless I can export to a DXF file to send to a machine for cutting. I draw the part looking down on it (top view) like it's sitting on a table, or on the table of the cutter. Seems like common sense. The shop will want a drawing so I make one, easy enough. I could also export the DXF from the drawing but Fusion would screw it up almost every time, either by puting text and drawing stuff in it or by messing up the dimensions, forgetting all about the actual part that makes a DXF and using the drawing itself as a source instead. Then I found this nice feature, make a flat pattern in the sheet metal menu and then I can export that as a DXF. Usually it works fine but in this design, the DXF is a view of the side of the part. I'm not sure why Fusion figures that's what I'd want a DXF for and I can't find any way to change the orientation. Others have commented about moving the part and other menu options which seem outdated because they don't exist in my current version of Fusion. So, can someone from Autodesk tell me... what is the secret fix to this one?

Re: Orientation of Flat Pattern

TheCADWhisperer — Thu, 14 May 2020 23:45:05 GMT

It would probably be better to Redefine your sketch to the XY plane (so that Z is perpendicular to the flat of the part). You can change the View Cube orientation to match Top to XY if desired. On most machine tools the axis of the tool is Z (this is true whether a horizontal axis or a vertical axis).

Also - you can save sketch directly as dxf. (although you might want to remove the construction circle before or after)

Re: Orientation of Flat Pattern

chris7XW6D — Fri, 15 May 2020 01:15:34 GMT

Thanks TheCADWhisperer. Somehow my design orientation was changed so that the Z axis was running back to front instead of bottom to top. Not sure when that happened but it was taking affect on all new designs so I didn't even notice when I created this one. I set the top back to Z top by right clicking on the Top face of the cube and selecting Set Current View as Top. Then I redefined the sketch plane, as you suggested, to x,y plane. Now the Flat Pattern works as expected.