Working with bent metal

[gus.grubba]

How would one go about "flattening" this so it can be cut and eventually bent? Is it even possible?

[macmanpb]

Hi,

Sheet Metal is not supported for now, but it is on the way. In the next big updates mid. 2016 scheet metal is provided to us.

I dont know if it has flattening support but i hope so. 😉

[gus.grubba]

Yep, I figured as much. I used the Inspect/Measure tool (after suppressing the bevel corners, which weirdly caused the center cut and upper holes to go out of whack) and created a new design from scratch based on that. It would help if we could have an actual "dimension" layer or something within the Modeling mode. You have to keep going back to Sketch mode to read the measurements.

A new design from scratch based on those measurements (I changed the center cut while at it):

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @gus.grubba,

That's a pretty clever way to approach this!

A couple of comments:

1. Yes, Sheet Metal is in the works.  Yes, it will support a "flat pattern representation" of the model that will do correct unfolding.
2. Regarding:  "It would help if we could have an actual "dimension" layer or something within the Modeling mode. You have to keep going back to Sketch mode to read the measurements":  While Fusion doesn't have a dimension layer or 3D annotations yet, you can turn on sketch dimensions so that you can see them without editing the sketch:
   
   
   
   

Good luck with your designs!

Jeff

[gus.grubba]

Ha! Learning something new every day. That's extactly what I had in mind. Thanks Jeff!

[Anonymous]

I have been using the sculpting feature and need the flatten to 2d cut out feature also. Looking forward to seeing it soon. 

[jeff_strater]

Hi @Anonymous,

Yes, sheet metal with unfolding is under development, and will be available in preview later this year.   It would be good to see the kinds of designs that you are building with Sculpt, because not every shape is unfoldable, especially the more "organic" shapes you can create with Sculpt.  If you want to post images or even f3d models of your designs, the sheet metal team will be happy to comment on whether they can be unfolded.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

Will this include the ability to unfold arbitrary shapes, such as the sides of a boat developed from a loft?  This is also known as conical development.

In other sheet metal applications,  such as solidworks, the unfolding only works with predefined "bends" of know radius and angle, with a K-factor.  An arbitrary capability would be very nice.

 In the attached files, you can see a program called delftship which does nurbs modeling has this ability to unfold/develop.  Colored faces in the 3d shape correspond to same colors on panels. The boat building community would love this capability!

[promm]

@Anonymous,

The first release of sheet metal is targeting break press manufacturing.  This does not include multi access unfolding or unfolding of arbitrary shapes as you are requesting.  I have a good amount of experience working with boat manufactures, one of my favorite customers that I used to work with was Safe Boats International.  I understand the value this kind of unfolding adds and based on feedback from our customers and community we can consider this function as a future enhancement to sheet metal.

Regards,

Mike Prom

[Anonymous]

I am trying to design some parts that have conical shapes and I really need to be able to flatten them. After they are flattened I need to cut holes of all kinds of shapes in it and then I need to put that all back into it's original shape and render them.

Thanks,

Alex