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Add Solid Body Selection to Fold Feature for Multibody Sheet Metal Parts

Add Solid Body Selection to Fold Feature for Multibody Sheet Metal Parts

The Fold command lacks a "Solids" selection button. This impedes productivity when folds are needed in multibody parts.

 

2023-05-10_10-13-28.png

 

I think users would benefit from the ability to select on which solid to apply the Fold feature without having to hide all other solid bodies.

 

Follow these steps to reproduce the limitation. A sketch in Inventor 2022 format has been attached if you would like to skip the sketching steps. A part with Face features is also attached.

 

Sketch

  1. Create a new sheet metal part.
  2. Create a sketch on any origin plane.
  3. Sketch a rectangle 6" x 3".
  4. Constrain midpoint of bottom line to origin.
  5. Sketch a rectangle of same dimension approximately two inches above the first rectangle.
  6. In the second rectangle, sketch a "fold" line 1" below the top line.
  7. Finish sketch.

Sketch for Fold Enhancment Request.png

 

Fold Feature

  1. Create a Face feature, select the bottom rectangle region, direction=down/back (sketch remains at top/front), click Apply.
  2. Select the two regions of the upper rectangle.
  3. Select New Solid.
  4. Click OK.
  5. The sheet metal part is now a multibody.
  6. Share the sketch if needed.
  7. Turn on sketch visibility as needed.

Part for Fold Enhancment Request.png

  1. Click Fold, select the "fold" line in the upper portion of the sketch.
  2. Due to the existence of two solids, and having no way to select which solid body to apply the fold to, the Fold preview fails.
  3. Click OK.
  4. Fold Fails because the Fold feature does not know to which solid it should be applied.
  5. Cancel the Fold command.
  6. Hide the first Solid Body (Face1 feature).
  7. Repeat the Face command.
  8. Select the "fold" sketch line again.
  9. Still no preview, but click OK.

2023-05-10_10-23-55.png

 

Review

  1. The fold should be successful since now only a single solid is visible.
  2. Show the first Face feature (or Show All solids).
  3. 2023-05-10_10-24-35.png
  4. No errors reported from the Fold feature.
  5. Expand the bodies in the Solid Bodies folder. Note that the Fold feature has been applied to the second solid body.

2023-05-10_10-27-49.png

Productivity would improve if we could select the solid body when creating a Fold feature.

 

This Solid body select limitation greatly impedes further Fold feature developments because the user must hide all other solid bodies in order to apply a new Fold feature to the required solid body.

 

I welcome your vote if you agree that users would benefit if the Fold tool had a Solids selection button.

 

Thank you for your time and attention.

 


Regards,
Jerry

2 Comments
Yijiang.Cai
Autodesk
Status changed to: Under Review

When looking into the sample dataset you provided, I find that the sketch bend line is created within the sketch profile used for face feature. The sketch bend line can be selected but no preview when more than one bodies are visible, and it will fail when click OK. When making only one body visible and picking the sketch bend line, the fold feature can be created. And the fold feature works fine with editing when turn more than one bodies visible.

 

When using the more general workflow, the sketch bend line is created in another sketch after two solids created. It will work fine.

 

This idea has been tracked as [INVGEN-69097 ]. Many thanks!

JBerns
Advisor

@Yijiang.Cai (River),

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

That is good to know that Fold works with a new sketch using projected geometry from the "base" sketch.

Great to see the preview also works.

With so many other sheet metal tools supporting a "Solid" selection, I hope that Fold will be improved in a future release.

Thanks again.

 

Regards,

Jerry

 

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