Sheet Metal- further developments? Roll. Flatten

[Anonymous]

Very happy to see sheet metal in Fusion and the functionality so far is great BUT I have a few, perhaps strange, uses that might be worth looking into developing for sheet metal in the future. One is ROLL... there are many sheet metal projects/ structures that use a rolled form rather than folded. I'm talking about cylinders, cones and the like. There are many programs available to create and deconstruct conical shapes for sheet outside of Fusion but it would be nice to have everything under one roof? Thoughts?

In the same vein, there are processes like hydroforming which inflate a material to the finished shape. It would be great to be able to reverse the process, say starting with a final shape and flattening it... perhaps 'flatten' is not the right term here. Compress? Squash? Anyway you get the idea. It's neither unfold nor unroll.

I thought I would put this out here and see if anyone else could use features like this? I have work-arounds using various formats to reach my final result but the "all under one roof" idea is really appealing.

Thoughts?

[stevsmar13]

Hydroforming would be an excellent addition!

I would be interesting to see how the varying thicknesses due to the shrinking and stretching would need to be accommodated, or if it's more like making a mould and then draping a sheet of metal over it?

[Brian]

I hope that sheet metal is still in an infant(ish) stage. Maybe they are waiting to see the response before furthering it's development. So far it has been a large help to us but still lacks in a lot of areas. I would love to see this environment continue to grow. So much potential for job shops and manufacturing businesses alike.

[Anonymous]

Generally for these types of construction the method of producing the shape (either water pressure or a hydraulic press with one solid form and the other side having a softer rubber) allows for the springback and stretch of the material being shaped by being flexible in it's own right. What I am looking for here is a method of taking a 3d shape and flattening, halving or unrolling to produce the flat pattern to start with. In a production setting this may mean cutting a flat pattern from a metal or carbon sheet to begin the construction process.

There is a poll going to gauge interest in this sort of feature, you can vote/ kudos/ comment here:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation-request-a/sheet-metal-further-development-roll...