topic Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch in Inventor Forum

Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

spencer — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 16:33:57 GMT

I've been trying to make a louver punch tool to match our own forming tool, and after spending 3 hours trying to get this thing to work I'm losing my mind.
Extracting iFeatures and saving the punch works as far as I can tell, the preview for the punch tool appears and looks right, but when I place the punch I get an error on the loft saying "The attempted operation did not produce a meaningful intersection edges from the face-face interaction"
I'm running out of ideas, anyone know what I might be doing wrong or can take a look at the punch?

Turns out I can't attach the .ide, but I can include the original part it was made from. It's kind of a mess but what was extracted was just the loft, the cut, and the 'Rep' sketch as the representation

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

JDMather — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 19:48:34 GMT

I don't know when I will get a chance to post example, but I see two issues....

1. I don't think Loft is the correct feature to use.

2. There are no bends modeled for the intersection - so the material would not be uniform thickness.

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

spencer — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 19:51:55 GMT

I'm not too worried about the part not being a uniform thickness, especially since I'll be showing the punch as just the 2D rep in the flat pattern.

What would be the 'correct' way to make that shape though? My boss has me remaking it without using lofts and so far it's turning out pretty ugly and messy

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

JDMather — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 19:57:58 GMT

Sweep with some editing is probably the correct technique.

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

johnsonshiue — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 21:31:16 GMT

Hi Spencer,

Indeed, Extract iFeature/Punchtool can be frustrating. The issue with the workflow is that it is not apparent why it fails and how to fix it. To get a successful extraction, you need to ensure the features have linear dependency (A depends on B; B depends on C and so on). Except the first sketch, no geometry should depend on any geometry not created by candidate features.

Attached is the modified part and the extracted iFeature/Punchtool. It shows it can be extracted but it is a tedious process. First, you need to edit each sketch and remove any local dependent constraints (horizontal or vertical) and dimensions to projected origin or other edges not created by extracting candidate features. Add parallel and perpendicular constraint instead.

Next, you need to edit each Sketch Coordinate system and make sure it is based on the Sketch9 geometry. This step will untangle the dependency on origin. You can right-click on the feature -> Relationship to see its dependency.

Many thanks!

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

spencer — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 12:42:30 GMT

Thanks, that seems to be mostly working. Only issue is that when placing the punch it seems to be ignoring the "Flat Pattern Punch Representation" option and not showing the 2D rep on the flat pattern.

But I also tried adding in other punches and they're ignoring that option too so I guess something else is going on.

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

christian3QNSZ — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 19:53:27 GMT

I have created already 20 different louvers that worked for the punch tool feature but for some reason this one doesn't work for me.

Re: Issues with Sheet Metal Punch

johnsonshiue — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 21:40:29 GMT

Hi! Please take a look at my reply to you on a separate thread.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/louver-punch-tool-issue/td-p/13236804

Many thanks!