SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal
SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal Tips and Tricks from Javelin’s Certified Experts
SOLIDWORKS Forming Tools are found in the Design Library and are used to form sheet metal parts. In the following image, you can see how a forming tool is dragged from the Design Library onto the sheet metal model to form the part. From time to time a customer will contact us to ask why…
When creating cut-extrudes on sheet metal models, it is recommended to choose the Normal Cut option under cut-extrude properties. What if a cut has already been made on a sheet metal and it is not normal? It could even be made by cut-loft feature. In SOLIDWORKS 2018, a new feature has been added to the…
SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal includes a Sketch Transformation folder in the Flat Pattern feature when a sketch is added to a face that is not the fixed face (i.e. a face that moves when the piece is flattened). Within this folder is a derived sketch of the original so it stays on the face as it…
Bend Allowance, Bend Deduction and K-Factor Tables in SOLIDWORKS
In this series of blog posts it was discussed what different terms like Bend Allowance, Bend Deduction and K-Factor mean and how we can calculate them for a specific sheet. You can read the previous post: What are Bend Allowance, Bend Deduction and K-Factor? And the post that explains how to calculate them here. In this post…
In my previous post I talked about K-Factor, Bend Allowance and Bend Deduction and what they mean in sheet metal design. Now let’s see how we can obtain these values for a specific sheet. As I mentioned in my last post you need to do some tests to calculate these values for a specific sheet….
An interesting feature in the Sheet Metal tab is the SOLIDWORKS Vent feature. Using the Vent feature, you can create a cutout, along with ribs, spars, and a filled-in boundary with just a very simple sketch. To accomplish the same thing using a Cut-Extrude would require a complex series of offsets and the process wouldn’t lend…
In a series of posts we are going to review the most important sheet metal design terminology — Bend Allowance, Bend Deduction and K-Factor. In this post I will review what these terms mean and in the next post I will show you how to calculate and use them in SOLIDWORKS. In sheet metal bending process when metal…
Gain Productivity by using Sheet Metal in SOLIDWORKS
By using the SOLIDWORKS sheet metal tools your productivity can be dramatically increased as well as be a cost effective solution to producing sheet metal models! With the sheet metal functionality you are able to: Create Base, Edge, Swept and Miter Flanges Take control of bend allowances/bend reductions by using bend tables Generate a number of bends…
A question we sometimes get in the SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal course is how to insert a 3D cross-break. The functionality seems to be there in the SOLIDWORKS Cross-Break command on the Sheet Metal toolbar, but upon inspection, the cross break it inserts is merely cosmetic. In most applications, this will be sufficient, since the distortion…
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