Coming (Very) Soon! New Sheet Metal Features!

[excitive]

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!

[MariusBaard]

Very handy, thanks, this was much helpful with importing DXF files.

Any Idea when solid to sheet metal will be available?

I made an demo a while ago, look at screen cast.

And here is link to design

https://a360.co/2NPItaL

This will be equally great full when available

[excitive]

Hello @MariusBaard!

Very happy to know you like the Bend feature.

Thank you for sharing the demo and sample file. I can happily share that the team is already working on a feature called "Convert to Sheet Metal", which will allow converting external/solid bodies into Sheet Metal components. It will be released soon. Stay tuned! 🙂 

[MariusBaard]

Heeeeyaaaa, you just made my day.

I love this program......

I am standing by to receive this with open arms.......

Bring it on!!!!!

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@MariusBaard wrote:

I made an demo a while ago

And here is link to design

---

I simplified the process a bit and tightened up the rips (they can be set back to your original if desired).

See Attached file.

Efficient Timeline

[MariusBaard]

Thanks Whisperer, that is a clever way of doing it.

Very interesting.......

Love the fact that there is always more than one way to create, but also prove to me that I have so much more to learn.

Thanks

[bryan5]

Any chance we will see a normal cutout for sheet metal soon??? (crossing fingers)

[colinNJB25]

I tried a quicky flat pattern I had around. I couldn't see how to bend into the page? I have to bend in both directions for this flat to work.

[MariusBaard]

Thanks for the convert to sheet metal, not quite what I was looking for. We started with a solid block and then convert it into sheet metal part by shelling it, cutting open the edges and flat pattern it.

Look at video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aYE4F6dlQw

[MariusBaard]

Hi CAD whisperer, Please send your file to the Fusion team, they don't seem to understand what we are looking for in solid to sheet metal.

It's great to convert a native design that was a sheet metal part to work in Fusion, kudus for them, but not what we had in mind

[excitive]

Hi @MariusBaard,

The current version of Convert to Sheet Metal is targeted for converting existing Sheet Metal parts created in other CAD packages and turning them into Fusion SM parts and flattening them. The entire parametric capabilities and solid-to-SM is more like a cherry on top.

Can you please give details on what you are trying to accomplish and what we could do to help you achieve that in Fusion?

Thanks!

[MariusBaard]

Please look at video

Look at video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aYE4F6dlQw