Frame Gen Insert End Cap - cap is not sheet metal

[julesgf]

Hi All

I use automated sheet metal export to CNC profile cutting. Because the auto end cap tool creates regular ipt not sheet metal I have to try to remember to manually convert them to sheet metal. This seems crazy to me. Shouldn't they be sheet metal?

Cheers

JF

[CGBenner]

@julesgf 

Not necessarily, in my last role our end caps were saw cut steel welded in place at fabrication.  There are many different acceptable ways to manufacture this, so Inevntor chose the path of least resistance by making them a standard part file.

[julesgf]

Sure, but would the sheet metal part be detrimental to that workflow?

J

[CGBenner]

@julesgf 

Probably not.  Maybe what you need would be a way to convert to Sheet Metal when placing the end cap.  I would recommend putting this into the Inventor Ideas, along with a description of your use case, and hope it gets voted up.

[julesgf]

Martin Zatecka from AD informed me that the end cap is authored from the library like structural profiles. so one can 

- Insert End Cap
- switch to sheet metal, save it
- Replace template in CC Editor

I didnt realise end cap was drawn from the library like structural parts, once I remembered how to publish a part I've got that working, including appearance, and tying the "thickness" end cap prop to the "Thickness" sheetmetal prop and my formula to pull Part Name into Stock Number. Saves a lot of work and reduces chance of errors.
Thanks Martin

The only thing I cant do is delete / overwrite the stock library templates, lets hope they are changed to sheetmetal in the future

[CGBenner]

@julesgf 

Martin is a great source of knowledge.  He has helped me many times over the years.

[cadman777]

The way I fixed that was to re-authored all CC parts that could be turned into flatpatterns, such as flat bar and square bar. That made it easy to run a rule at the end of the modeling process to get all flatpatterns of all parts with uniform thickness into a drawing so it can be sent to the steelmill for their burn table. Looks like you did the same thing.