5 New Features You Should Know About in 3D SheetMetal Creator

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With 3D SheetMetal Creator, you can create accurate, detailed sheet metal designs that are manufacture-ready anytime on any device. This fully browser-based solution, purpose-built for sheet metal design, enables you to create complex 3D sheet metal geometry and automatically generate and view 2D flat pattern geometry. Below, I’m going to tell you about five new features that will save you time and clearly communicate design intent for manufacturers.

  1. Jog Command

With the Jog tool, you can achieve two bends on your sheet metal part from one sketch. Previously, you’d have to create two sketches and do the bends individually, so this saves you quite a few steps.

Using the Jog command, you can create a sheet metal jog feature without having to create multiple bends from flat features. The Jog command combines two bends from a flat shape into a single feature.

 

  1. Bend Order Table

Quickly review both the folded and flattened states of a sheet metal component, along with key manufacturing information such as bend order, direction, angle, and radius in a bend table format. This is a nice enhancement as you can view your sheet metal bends in an easily readable tabular format in the same hierarchy as you have modeled them in the DesignManager Feature tree and change the order. Just drag the bends in the table to re-order them.

For instance, you could order them to more clearly convey the manufacturing intent to the manufacturer to show how the bends should appear in the manufacturing stages. You could take it one step further to communicate that and rename the bends in the table something like “Stage 1 bend” or “Stage 2 bend.”

 

 

  1.  Sheet Metal Hole Command

Earlier this year, we added the Hole command, enabling you to make holes the same size on multiple sketches on different planes simultaneously. You can also pick from a variety of industry-standard hole types. We have even included popular sheet metal-specific standards such as PEM.

 

 

  1. Closed Corner

This is the same great feature as in SOLIDWORKS desktop. Speed up the design process to close off gaps between sheet metal flanges for a clean and professional finish.

It’s important to close any gaps between overlapping flanges to ensure proper alignment for welding and optimize the structural integrity of sheet metal designs. The new Closed Corner command eliminates the manual process of extending the flanges to close the gaps.

The Closed Corner command includes three options called Gap, Overlap and Tabbed. The Gap option lets you specify the gap dimensions. Overlap will close the gap completely. The Tabbed option will close the gap between the two flanges.

 

  1. Point or Curve Mapping

The Point or Curve mapping feature enables you to map sketches, edges, curves, or points to a flat pattern. This is useful if there is an engraving or construction element in the folded sheet metal design because it easily enables you to communicate those types of details on a flat pattern. This key flat pattern information can be shared with stakeholders through the new DXF export settings to include all mapped entities. This will give the manufacturer a better idea of how much flat pattern is needed.

 

Stay updated on other enhancements delivered in functional deliveries throughout the year here: https://SOLIDWORKS.com/xWhatsNew.

3D SheetMetal Creator is available in the SOLIDWORKS Cloud Offer.

Soumitra Vadnerkar

Soumitra Vadnerkar

Soumitra is a new member in SOLIDWORKS Product Management team. He manages SOLIDWORKS Inspection and SOLIDWORKS Cloud roles. He has Masters and Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and has been a CAD enthusiast since he started his academics. Soumitra has 5 years of work experience in sheet metal, rubber, and plastic industries. His expertise lies mostly in stamping and injection-blow molding tool design but currently he is also improving his new skills in Product Design using SOLIDWORKS Cloud applications. Besides work, Soumitra likes to keep himself busy learning about new technologies in computer hardware and AI.