Normal to thickness cut

[bryan5]

I was working with the sheet metal environment making a NEMA enclosure. When I went to make the miter cuts I noticed that the cut was not normal to the thickness. It was a regular to cut. When working with sheet metal parts a normal to thickness cut is vital especially when cutting through muliple flanges, place a circle cut at an angle, or a cut on flanges at an angle.

Maybe I am overlooking a setting to change how a cutout works in sheet metal. The work around I had to do is unfold, add the cuts and then fold back. This is OK but not efficent when it is easier to see where you need to make the cuts in 3D

Thank you

[promm]

@bryan5,

Thank you for your feedback, we too think that cut normal is a valuable feature to sheet metal design.  My original target was to have cut normal done for the July release.  Higher priority, quality fixes pushed this feature to after our initial release.  As you mentioned there is a work around of using unfold and fold.

Cheers,

Mike Prom

[bryan5]

Thank you for the reply and to know it is in the works.

[Anonymous]

Is there a current expected release date for cut normal to face in sheet metal? I see that it got bumped from priority about 9 months ago and I don't see it available yet.

Working without that feature adds a lot of time, and for me, has created many issues and failures with unfold & refold when edges are modified in the flat state.

[Anonymous]

I am also very interested to hear what has been done with this lately. 12 months now and hoping to see something in the next release....

[martin4CWNZ]

I am also waiting for this feature, it is the main reason I can not switch over to Fusion 360. "Normal cut" is very important and unfold-cut-fold is not a good solution for parametric designs.

Will it come soon?

[chrisplyler]

A cut-normal option would nice, but I'm a bit confused.

Why is unfold-cut-fold not good? I mean, think about it, if you're going to make those cuts while the sheet is still flat, and then bend it, it's perfectly logical. An option to cut-normal would save a couple of clicks, but otherwise, behind the scenes it would be doing exactly the same thing, right?

And if you're laying out (sketching) a shape in a 2D plane, to cut out a hole across a curved bit of sheet metal, how are you doing it anyway?

[martin4CWNZ]

Most things can be done without "Normal cut", but in a professional workflow it is very annoying and time-consuming on some designs.

I attach two examples, both are scenarios from recent work that I see as time-consuming to get parametric in Fusion 360.

If there are trix to solve those things easy, I would be happy to hear.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@martin4CWNZ wrote:
..If there are trix to solve those things easy, I would be happy to hear.

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Hybrid modeling techniques - I use them all the time for sheet metal parts.

[chrisplyler]

Ah, I see. A cut-normal would indeed be useful if it could take the max extent on both sides.

I don't know what is supposed to be cut in your second example, but I set up the cut desired in your first picture like this:

[martin4CWNZ]

There are workarounds indeed. One powerful workaround is to make a surface and then convert to SheetMetal, I use this in Solidworks also sometimes for complicated parts. But I(and many with me) would like those possible "workarounds" and hybrid-modelling abilities to be features as a complement to Normal cut, not instead of Normal cut.

I attach a video of how the "Normal cut" works in Solidworks and most software for SheetMetal. It is possible to blow a cut straight through a sheetmetal-part, in any direction and even through(partly as well) the bend radiuses. Every part of the cut will be normal to the sheetmetal-surface.

[chrisplyler]

Ooooo, I do like that!

[martin4CWNZ]

Fusion 360 could probably beat most other CAD-programs out there by introducing a "Normal cut" checkbox in the extrude-command and make it work on all bodys, not just sheetmetal. I would love that 🙂

[chrisplyler]

That would be super weird. Normal-cut through that same shape as a solid is going to produce the following:

Ain't nobody got time for that!

[martin4CWNZ]

I would say that it would be a powerful feature if used wisely.

For example Solidworks can not do a "Normal cut" through something that is not a sheetmetal-part, like a angel-iron or a pipe(square/rectangular etc.)

If Fusion would introduce "Normal cut" I think it would be most logical to continue on their hybrid-concept and let it work across the board on all bodys.

Edit: Just to clarify, I am not saying that it should always "cut normal", I say that it should be a choice to "cut normal" and when its chosen it should cut "normal to surface" on all bodys(not like SW that can do it just on sheetmetal).

[chrisplyler]

It works on sheet metal because both sides of the sheet are parallel. What happens if you have a solid object with the two sides having a pipe run through them are at some angle to each other? How will Normal-cut know which direction is normal?

[martin4CWNZ]

Alla functions in a CAD program are condition-based in some way. The choice to do a "Normal cut" can simply be greyed out if the conditions for performing a "Normal cut" is not met. Thats how it is in SW, if you cut a solid-body "Normal cut" is greyed out but if you cut a sheetmetal-body, the "Normal cut" is available because the condition is something like "Must be sheetmetal". It could work in Fuison 360 as well, but my opinion is that if/when they implement it, they should place the conditions on a lower level(like they have done with solid/surface/edge etc. to get the awesome hybrid-functionality they have) ex. "Must be solid and parallel".

If they can do magic sweep-like cuts that normals to all cutted surfaces, it would ofc be cool, but thats nothing I claim from them 🙂 But at least Normal cut on sheetmetal is a human right ^^

 Edit: When I think about it, It is not greyed out in SW, but if checking the "Normal cut" checkbox when cutting other bodies then sheetmetal, it will generate a error dialog. Should be greyed out instead in my opinion 🙂

[chrisplyler]

I see. That makes good sense.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@martin4CWNZ wrote:

If Fusion would introduce "Normal cut" I think it would be most logical to continue on their hybrid-concept and let it work across the board on all bodys.

Edit: Just to clarify, I am not saying that it should always "cut normal", I say that it should be a choice to "cut normal" and when its chosen it should cut "normal to surface" on all bodys(not like SW that can do it just on sheetmetal).

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Autodesk Inventor is the Autodesk product equivalent of SolidWorks.

Inventor has many sheet metal tools that are not available in Fusion 360.