Inventor 101: Sheet Metal Basics | Autodesk Virtual Academy

hello and good morning everyone Nigel and byuk application engineer and your host for today's Autodesk Virtual Academy presented by QT technologies I'm joined today by Javier Chavez I don't know good so today what we're going to be going over as you can see on the screen inventor sheetmetal basics and the reason we've chosen sheet metal for this week is a I guess we've had about 90 AVH at this point going on for almost two years now and sheet metal is kind of eluded us the entire time I've had it on the schedule multiple times and it gets pushed for something else but we're finally getting to it today so definitely one of the most requested topics from users how do I get started in sheet metal how does it work a lot of a lot of customers that I see are using things like AutoCAD for sheet metal and have been for a long time and certain there is like you know very easy workflow to take some of that legacy data into inventor and create those 3d models out of it and how will terr that do as well today so if you have any questions definitely post them into the GoToWebinar chat box at any time and we'll make sure to address those either during the session or during the dedicated Q&A session at the end Dennis anything the house no I think that's perfect I mean I know it's a basic topic but at the same time you know if you don't design sheet metal parts you're going to use all the other tools most likely and then something you'll get that one sheet metal part that you need to create so you might not be as familiar with that tool and suddenly when you try it things might not work out a lot so so certainly I will definitely make sure that you leave here today knowing you know how to get started tool and I start using in your workflow so let's go ahead and get beginning on this all right so perfect gum if you guys don't know me my name is Javier Chavez I've been with Khatib technologies 13 years now so I need to update that slide time goes by really fast obviously I felt like I just edited that like yesterday but you can see you know I've been teaching working with tools like AutoCAD and vendor involved simulation all of those for quite a long time so again that's a little bit about me and if I talk a little bit about the RV industry recreational vehicles motor home travel trailers just as simply because I spent the good you know 12 plus years in that industry prior to me being a deep right so what we actually have is is some basic steps that we need to take the first part of it is setup we're going to go ahead and tell how to tell them better how to behave and in doing so it can control every feature that we create is going to control the thickness Bend radius things like that and of course you'll be able to deviate but during the setup process you're going to define a few things so that you know it it behaves a certain way by default so the next step will do the modeling part that's actually creating the flanges and phases things like that and of course at some point we need to check and see if what we can what we design can be unfolded so we'll create a flat pattern and last but not least we're going to document what we have so those are the four basic steps and if we take a deeper look into the setup portion of it you know it should eventually give us a part that looks like this but again if we take a look into the setup portion of it you'll see that we have to define a rule and so this rule determines the material that's going to be used so you know we can get a good weight but we can also identify and separate our rules by that material because they have different properties for unfolding so a stainless steel versus a aluminum might unfold differently you might assign as a different rule so that you can calculate that that unfolded version of that flat pattern correctly it stretches a little bit differently and of course there's going to be different thicknesses so these three things are defined in a sheet metal ruled the material the thickness and the unfolding behavior so let's go and take a quick look inside of inventor so inside of inventor we're going to go ahead and create a new part and if you notice when you go to create a new part there's always been this sheet metal template and so we have a standard part and your sheet metal template but and if we click on each one of these I don't know if you've ever noticed this but at the bottom right you get a little box that kind of shows you what you're going to get there's a pinch is a bit of information here that shows you which of them is you typically give them use this to model a solid model like what you see here and of course if we switch to sheet metal okay this lets us know that we're going to be using this to model the sheet metal part so the two files are almost identical in fact I'll start off with a standard IPT so in the standard IPT if we take a look at this I've got no sheet metal tools up towards the top left it's just your 3d modeling tools and there's always been as long as I can remember anyways this button at the top right to convert an existing part into a sheet metal part so it's not a sheet metal part just yet and even before we get started you know doing any modeling I can go to FX parameters and see hey there's no parameters here and so in just a moment what we'll do is we'll go and convert it to a sheet metal bar we'll get out our tools in to be able to create and define our sheet metal rules and things like that but then I'm going to go and do that and sure enough right away I get my sheet modeling tab with all the shape modeling tools that I need so I can go ahead and you know take a quick look at these I've got you know tools to create stuff modify you know sheetmetal features and so on so if I take a deeper look at FX parameters even though I have nothing modeled I've got all these sheetmetal specific parameters here okay all these pertain to sheet metal and if you notice too we cannot change them they're all grayed out we don't change them here that makes sure that you know every time you work with a sheet metal part the parameter should use define it are consistent every single time it will be spelled th IC ke ne SS for thickness and so on and so forth so all these numbers are here and the way you control them is through the setup portion of this which is the sheet metal rule they show up here on the setup panel and so you can convert to a standard part again if you needed to however if I click on sheet metal defaults this is where these rules live okay so at the top of all the we have our sheet metal rule okay and it sort of has the subcomponents here so the rule has a material that gets to define them it also has an unfolding behavior or rule that gets defined there and even the thickness that comes from again the sheet metal rule so it all kind of generate from that and so we'll take a look at that we'll create our own if I click on the pulldown there's some that are there by default ideally what you want to do is probably populate that list with all the different ways you choose to create your sheet metal components so we're going to be a thicker aluminum some we're going to going to be you know maybe a thinner stainless steel some are going to be just a cold ruled skin so we got all those different choices so if I click on this pencil what it'll do is it'll take me to the Styles the define these and it's literally the style and standard editor that you're used to this is where you see lighting right and we're not going to use that now but then you see your sheet metal rule you see the sheet metal unfold rule that goes inside of that or gets defined by that and so we'll start by taking a look at this here on the right hand side we'll take a look at the fact that you know this is where you define the material so if this is supposed to be a stainless steel you can you know tell that rule to change your part to a stainless steel component you see your thickness here so every time you create a feature you won't really have a choice on the thickness it's going to obey this rule if I take a look over to the right this is where I see my unfold rules and there's only two available and this list comes from left hand side so you might choose to define different ways to unfold your components here and so let's take a quick look at that let's go and take a look at this default k factor which is you know which are going to use most of the time and the default k factor is a simplest way to determine how we're going to add material as this part unfolds or stretches to calculate the flat matter okay and and you could ask actually you know we remove material at some point too but this is basically the k-factor it's a percentage of the thickness so it's 44% right now and it's always measuring from the inside of a bed that's the neutral axis that stays the same length no matter what as you unfold and create a flat matter and so you might have different K factors for different machines so keep that in mind you might have these different K factors because different machines bend and stretch the metal differently you might have a coin machine that creates a 90 degree Bend you might have a brake press there's all kinds of different tools and machines to be able to do that and again from facility to facility or manufacturer to manufacture these numbers could be different and this number also changes just depending on the material so you can easily have a big list here of different K factors for different machines okay what you're defining here is a list a library of K factors and you could use a bed compensation option where you create this custom equation this is much more difficult but it is more precise you can also sort of create a spreadsheet as well that kind of says hey look I've got a 30 degree ban and it's an 8 inch radius and the material is 0.06 stretch it as much or add this much material there's different ways to go about this but again default K factor is what's most common and if we want to create our own rule here or our own K factor we can go ahead and click new right it's copying the default the one that I have highlighted and I'm going to go ahead and create a new K factor here of maybe point four one and I'll name it accordingly so I'll go ahead and do that okay and so now I have this point four one K factor and I can go ahead and tell it you know this is going to be point four one instead of point four four okay so here's that spreadsheet option I can create a bend table right and I can add lines to the to the table here different thicknesses and through that I can do this a little bit more accurately with that says that we're going to go back to just a linear option at 0.41 and we're going to go ahead and save it and so now that I have this saved I got more choices so when I go back to the rules here this drop-down list now reflects all the different unfolding rules that I could possibly have so let's take a look at some of the other things that get defined in this rule so the sheet gets defined here we can decide you know how we're going to show punches if we want to show punches and that whole k-factor thing by the way is an advanced topic we could easily do send you some information on how to extract the k-factor you could definitely bend a piece of like 4-inch metal on a machine and extract the k-factor for that machine so we could send you some information on that and share it with you so when you do create punches you have the choice you know to show it in different representation EXO 2d sketch 2d representation here with the center mark Center marks only right I'm going to go ahead and leave this as the form feature and this is just for the flat pattern by the way so how do we want to show that we get to decide you know what the reporting angles going to be so you're either going to report a or B on your drawings on your documentation Bend you know 135 degrees or maybe 45 degrees for the for the beaver okay how do you want to report that so default today I'm going to take that if you look at the bend here we decide you know how the relief my default is going to take a is going to look and so at some point when you're adding these bends in the middle of edges you might have to create a relief to be able to make that then so they're straight we got numbers and dimensions according to this tabulated set of values here and I can go to make this round really the same numbers here as well and if I go to care we're assuming hey we're just going to snip a little bit of we're going to make a cut on that edge and maybe do some census tinsmiths make a slit there to be able to make that vent okay so I'm going to set this to so maybe round and the relief with a is a is a factor of the thickness so it is equal to the thickness thickness here thickness here thickness here right and maybe before I go too much further let's go to create my own style so I'm going to go and click new I'm not going to save this one instead instead of making changes to the default I'm going to go ahead and call this SS point one it's going to be stainless field it's going to be point one so okay I've got this new one on defining here and this one is going to be round and we're going to change the sum of the values here so the default Bend radius is going to be equal to the thickness okay so if I make it point one that's going to be the bend radius is going to end up being point one if the thickness is point one right over here a factor of the thickness with the vendor or the relief depth is half the thickness so it's going to be 0.05 right and so if I go to the corner option here this is how I define I'm going to go how how we define work how we're going to trim the corners and again we could have a round option we could have a pair right we're assuming when it's in the flat pattern there is no relief and you're just going to let the middle sort of risk there and a fracture so trim the bend it's always going to go to the Bend area so these dash lines represent the start and the end of the bend okay linear well creates a pie shaped cut there in the flat pattern and that basically allows us to maybe weld that gap close it'll be fairly close there and then arc weld it very similar it's just a bigger gap to fill in with the more material so I'm going to go ahead and maybe leave this as round right I can decide how big that releases and same thing here with a 3-band transition I got a round Bend with radius a hole round an intersection here which just goes to this little vertex here or no replacement right and so you're going to have a fairly big hole there you know in the finished product when you're when it's all folded up but in the flat pattern this is we'll show and that's what they'll cut to so I'm going to set this back to round with radius however that radius you get to decide here it's equal to bend radius which is equal to the thickness at the moment so let's go back to the first tab let's go and change our thickness this is going to be 0.1 like we said okay and for the material we're going to go ahead and look for our stainless steel all right and we're going to go ahead and click sake so from here if we want to actually use that we can make the stainless steel active right now the default is active and so I can right click make that the active style it's now stainless steel point one and it will build my features accordingly so I can go ahead and click Save and close and if I come back to this you know this is how to behave is going to use these rules this thickness right the material is going to be stainless steel the unfold rule I didn't change at all quickly change that we said maybe was going to be this point for 1k factor so I'll save that okay and now SS point one uses this rule this rule that says hey we're going to use stainless steel point for 1k factor the thickness is updated now what's kind of nice is if you want to kick a part out very quickly and you don't care to necessarily make another style you can deviate from these you can change the thickness from what it is here to whatever you want and suddenly you know it's going to behave a little bit differently you can deviate with the material make it something different like plastic which would work too well or you can set it back to obey the rule same thing with the unfold rule we can deviate here and use some other rule as necessary but again we're changing the default behavior for every feature we create so I'm going to just go to continue with the default here and it's now set to obey those rules so with that said I'll go ahead and and continue here there's nothing to find nothing change here so I'll go and close this but that's now our default rule and I'm just going to go ahead and pop back into the presentation here right so we defined all those things the unfolding rule just so you know affects the flat pattern it's going to be larger or smaller depending on what that percentage is and so again look for some documentation on how to get that or extract that information okay so we're going to start now using some of the basic commands here to create sheet metal so I'm going to start real simple eventually I'll create a part that fits within an assembly at some point but I'm just going to start with some of these commands just so you know what they do what they are and in a few of those for instance fold I'll incorporate that into one of the other exercises that will show here so the basics let's hop back into inventor so now that I've got this right I've got my style set up it's going to use stainless steel as opposed to you know any other material I'm simply going to start left to right again I start with the sketch almost everything starts off with the sketch and so the most basic thing you can create is your first base and so I'm going to go ahead and start sketching here it doesn't matter what you create as long as it's a flat object and our sketch is going to make sure that we keep it flat we also want to make sure maybe that we have some edges to add flanges to it this is going to be something like a box so I'm going to go ahead and just start with a rectangle okay and obviously I could size this constrain it the way I need to you're going to want to go ahead and do that just like you normally do so I'm going to go ahead and finish the sketch and I'm going to click on one of the first tools available so this is kind of like the creation tools in the 3d modeling environment almost all these require sketch and I'm gonna start with the face tool so basic tool it just it's just like the extrude tool except you don't get to decide how thick it's going to extrude that's decided by the sheet metal rule right so there it is I get to sort of extrude it I need to decide you know this way or that way and there's not a whole lot to do here except for you know go ahead and create the face there is a Bend option where you can immediately add a bend however we don't have anything else created so this is really our only option we're going to create this and sorry that actually shows up here you would be able to pick edges if there was some other face somewhere and immediately join it but with that said I'm going to go ahead and click OK alright so next basic tool is a flange tool and so if I launch this in the flange tool I'm going to add a bend somewhere along the edge and depending on which side you pick so I'm going to go ahead and zoom in if I pick the bottom edge it wants to you know go ahead and Bend downward and you could always flip that there is a flip button that will let you do that but I'm going to go ahead and use my control key and you know deselect that edge again if I pick the correct edge I just get the right direction the first time okay so there's my edge here's another edge as soon as I add a second edge if I'm going to do more than one edge in fact I could do all of them at the same time it knows to add a release here okay well how big is that relief you know what rules is it abiding by its all the rules and the defaults that we set up so this Bend radius is again in that rule set and you can see then radius equals Bend radius well what is that if you hover over it you get a tooltip and it get it's point one so it was equal to the thickness in the style so now we're starting to utilize those those parameters and at any time you could deviate so if this is just the default it equals the thickness and I can go ahead and make it something larger so now I'm deviating from that and that Bend you saw get a little bit larger and that is measuring from the inside Bend radius so some basic tools there right and you can go ahead and decide you know at some point okay when I start looking at this scene again we've got some defaults here and when we get to you know some of the options here relief shaved corner it's using some of these options so the gap I could set the gaps for all these flanges that I might create all four or five six seven flanges right here and maybe bring that gap a little closer again that's using the default but I can always bb-8 so you notice I can't make this zero I want to well this I can't make this zero I can't have edges a touch what I can do is get pretty darn close right so point zero zero one that creates a tiny gap that still allows us to unfold if I were to actually touch those and it couldn't unfold so that's why when we put in zero it shows up red it's out of range it's got to be above zero point zero one point zero zero zero one right as long as there's a gap it's okay with that okay so that will change the gaps on everything you see here so I'm going to go ahead and add another edge here and if I were to rotate over here it would do the same thing that setting is global to this command so every every gap you see there is at point zero zero one so for whatever reason I wanted to deviate on just one corner these icons let me do that so it shows you know what the dialog box is set to but I can go ahead and say you know for this one I'm actually going to make it just 0.1 right or point to something much bigger and so I could also change the shape so instead of that one being round I can go ahead and make this one a square right so I'll click OK click OK once again and you'll see that okay I told it in the style to make it round I got to deviate here I told it in the style to keep a gap of equal to the thickness and it's much larger here and then if I go to this corner right I got this much smaller gap okay so there's there's one tool there right so these are the probably the most basic tools that you'll find in here there's other tools that you know eventually if you create a flat component you might want to go ahead and round the corners okay even if it's not flat just to remove sharp edges and so this is a version of the filler tool but just for sheetmetal okay and so we can add multiple corners and set our radius to whatever we want and so what the tool does I'll go and use the corner chamfer tool similar tool instead of allowing me to add Phillips here along the long edge here it filters amount just to the thickness edge and so here's a camper and it's currently set to a quarter by quarter I can define it you know quarter by angle two distances in this case I just want to go ahead and put it here and define it as one quarter by one quarter okay so a lot of the things you'll create will require openings or holes and so it's a matter of simply sketching them and you could sketch on an existing surface just like they're used to in fact I'll go ahead and sketch this here and in some cases what you might need to do is actually create a opening or a hole or something that goes on a corner or wraps around the corner so I'm going to go ahead and create this rectangle right and I want this to wrap around the corner now I might want to dimension a quarter inch away from an edge over here so you know normally we projection a tree and I can go ahead and reject these edges but I can't necessarily just pick an edge and decide you know how far I want to put it from the unfolded edge so you have tools here to project the flat pattern so very similar however it's temporarily going to unfold it right into my sketch and so what I see now is the extents there of the unfolded version and so with that I can go ahead and move this back and maybe dimension this a certain distance away from the unfolded version that way I know if I go to create this and wrap it around there I can go ahead and make it onto the sheet metal instead of actually flying off the edge there so I'm going to go to make this an eighth inch right and I can certainly constrain the rest of this relative to these yellow lines or edges so with that said time to cut and if I go ahead and cut this if I just cut with the defaults you know it knows to just cut through the thickness so that's the difference between this and the extrude command it's using just the thickness and only cutting that much again if I just use the default I'm not going to get what I want it cuts through the thickness literally and that's it I actually want it to wrap around and get an eighth inch away from this edge so if I go to that feature I can go ahead and edit that feature and tell it to cut across the bend and it wraps the cut around the bend taking into account the k-factor and making sure that I get an eighth inch away from that edge okay all the other options very similar to what you're used to and like an extrude tool so there it is right and I can you know plan that or work with that exactly the way I meant to which is an eighth of eighth inch away from that edge okay so lots of commands here can't get into all of these some of these are almost identical but some of the basic ones we got covered here and a few of these I'll continue to work on as we go through some other examples so let's get back to the presentation portion of things let's talk about modeling in an assembly so for those of you guys that said hey you guys design these parts to support a structure a motor or something this is for you guys and it's no different than designing a part within the context of an assembly in fact that's what you're doing except you know we're just going to do it cheat metal so three steps there that I noted right you might want to extract your reference geometry project edges if you will and get that into your part that you're going to model you can easily create this going to faces like you see here and yellow and then quickly connect them so we'll do that next and it'll be fairly quick so make sure you pay attention here so take a look at it this is that same model we were just looking at basically I need some bracketry to connect this welding machine to the base so I'm going to go ahead and create a new part and this is nothing new on the assemble tab if you click create you can decide hey I'm going to go ahead and create a new part from the color bracket and I'm going to use a sheet metal template from the get-go okay so there's a checkbox here to constrain the sketch plane to the selected face so I'm going to allow that to happen and if I click OK it's waiting for me to pick a sketch plane for the base feature so I want to connect it to this this is going to be my sketch plane and right here when I make this connection it creates a new part and attaches the XY plane to that surface so all of this is greyed out because we are now editing the bracket you can see that here in the browser that is the active part all these other parts are grayed out alright so I chose a sheet metal template I might need this set up my default or maybe import them in or grab them from the style library I'm just going to go ahead and leave it and use what's there so I'm going to start sketching and this is where you can see the actual work planes this is that XY plane it is attached to that face okay and so if you can rotate anything in this and just a get a better idea as to where you're at no problem doing that I'm going to go ahead and project some important information so I want to go ahead and project the holes that I want to tap into and click my bracket geometry on right and so I also want to make sure I grab some edges here right and so I want to make sure that I grab those edges and start creating my geometry right about there and create some basketry that fits within those confines so with that said I'm going to go ahead and start creating some geometry so I'm going to create my face again and if I look at it this way okay I could make this maybe line up with this edge constrain it to that edge and I'm going to go and start sizing things up so I can put as many constraints as I need to for this I'm going to go to make this four inches even then um maybe to mention this certain distance away from this first hole let's go to make that 2075 all right pretty close to that edge and at this point right this is almost fully constrained I'm going to go ahead and tug on this I need to wit so I'm going to go ahead and dimension here and make this 0.75 as well so there's the first portion of my bracket that's going to actually attach there okay and I could use those circles to extrude this or basically create a face okay so I want to be careful that I don't extrude into the solid so if I go this way I'd be interfering with this and if I go this way I'm touching that surface and it's fully constrained on with that surface at this point so for my bracket now it needs to connect over here to the welder and so I'm going to start a new sketch and actually I can actually take this plane right here okay I'll go to project some geometry here in fact I'll project the entire face and obviously I can you know create my bracketry a little bit different than that if I need to but for the most part I'm going to go ahead and finish the sketch now one of the things I did I sort of guessed that the width here okay and I'm extracting a width or a height say I should say really for this edge and this edge so I don't think they match I'm going to go and create a face anyways and then connect them then again I'm extruding away from that face I capture that obviously could have created it a little bit differently made it bigger made it made it to match this component exactly in terms of width but I'm going to go ahead and click OK or better yet there is a bend tool out here that I can use after I'm done with this but that same tool exists right here okay so I could actually tell it right now early in the process instead of launching the command afterwards that I want to connect to this edge and immediately it's arts creating geometry that connects to this edge okay so lots of ways to do this I'm going to go ahead and deselect that edge because I want to show you a few more options in terms of that tool so I'm going to deselect that click okay [Music] alright so if I get back to this component you see how I could have made that connection very easily I'm going to open up this component all by itself okay so a couple ways I could have done this I could have launched the command afterwards and it's just a few ways we could have done this now obviously if I pick this edge and I pick this edge the bend does something like this this wouldn't work I could click OK and it just it would not like it what I can do is maybe change here to add a double Bend so one bend to bend it sort of adds this S or z shape then to make it happen now the welder is in the way so obviously that's not going to work and I did pick this edge and this edge so that's why it's doing what it's what it's doing there okay so I'm going to cancel out of that and I'm going to show you again just a another way to go about this how about we pick outside edge - outside edge so what it does now it's going to extend the face of one of the the faces here to have this vertical face get added in so one entire face would be get added in here and make that connection between the bracket and the component so this is valid this is something that should work with this and I can click OK and now I've got a bracket that actually connects over here and I've got a little bit of a remnant here that I can probably cut off just because one area is thicker than the other but that might be what you're going for as well so I'll go ahead and close this and get back to the assembly and you can see I've got something that pulls up my welder so let's go take a look back at this again right so we extracted some reference geometry projected edges by the way if you hold your control key down they do not become adaptive so just something to think about because addict tivity kind of makes things a little bit more complicated so again hold your control key down as you're projecting those or using those and it'll just put the geometry there with no connect connection back to the original geometry so let's take a look at more stuff okay so what if we have a existing files DWG files or step or I just files we can import those and still unfold those even though we didn't create them with inventor sheetmetal tools maybe they got created in another tool such as SolidWorks or Proheat as long as the thickness is consistent you can unfold those okay with DWG files you might have legacy flat pattern somebody figured out the flat pattern for a component and you've got old DWG files and you now need the folded version to use in a assembly so both those scenarios exist and what we'll see here is when you work with an existing AutoCAD file you can basically copy and paste or import the geometry in and start to use the fold lines or the bend minds to fold that back up so let's go take a look at that we'll start with the AutoCAD file and then we'll go and find maybe a step file all right so I'm going to go ahead and jump into AutoCAD here and so this is just one of the ways you can get the AutoCAD information in you can simply window across it right right click go to your clipboard and copy that's one way right now keep in mind what we're looking at here we got the outer extents here and then we have these lines right here these are or Bend lines ok so one thing you want to make sure is that if you get these Bend lines from somewhere make sure they go all the way across and touch the end through the extents of the the sheetmetal okay so if it was cut short this would work right and then we've got openings all right so there's openings here openings here and so forth right so now we're going to go and use them in inventor and so I'm going to go to create another new part a new sheet metal part and there's obviously ways to import this you know besides just cutting and pasting but I like doing that I think it's one of the easiest ways to do it so with that said I'm going to go ahead and start my sheet metal part I'm gonna start sketching here and I'm pasting 2d information so it makes sense that I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and paste it in my sketch I'm going to right click and choose paste now if I want to be maybe a little better about this one of the things I could do as I'm getting ready to paste is do another right click instead of just pasting the geometry I could do another right click and go to paste options and I can control you know because AutoCAD doesn't know what you're drawing in inches or milliliters I can control how those import units are going to work I can tell it to constrain endpoints and apply geometric constraints that means if there's lines that are perpendicular to each other go ahead and add those in it's perpendicular constraints so I'm going to take the defaults here and I should be okay I've got you know line work that's constrained end to end right there's no dimensions on here so you might take this a step further and fully constrain this and add your dimension data anymore geometric dimensions but I'm basically good to go here everything's closed up we are assuming that the drawing you know somebody you know close up the line work there's no gaps here showing you know a gap maybe in here here of the task extrude so it's got to be fully enclosed so I'm going to go ahead and finish my sketch seam getting really close there but again I got sheetmetal tools I'm just going to create a face from all these little boundaries that created ok I'm going to go offset this down and so I'm telling it to sort of extrude or I'll set that down and I'll click okay so I've got the flattened version here we're assuming that that drawing shows the correct flattened version you might need to go to your sheetmetal defaults and and apply the k-factor that they're using and fly the thickness that was you know documented in that drawing but when you're done you're ready to start adding the folds so I'm going to go ahead and show the sketch here there's my sketch I'm going to reuse that to fold this thing back up and so here's the full tool you could draw from scratch your flat component and if you just draw a line across you know a surface and a sketch make sure it touches its edge to edge you can add a bend or a full right on that line we're just using AutoCAD lines to do that so in this case here we use the full tool right again with all these tools you got defaults here's a default Bend radius here's the default unfold option the bend tools right there getting created so I'm going to use round and maybe deviate just a little bit but I'm just going to go ahead and pick on the shape tab here my Bend lines so if I push that down right it gives me a little preview with what it's going to do is it's going to bend it the wrong way so I got options here and I can tell it to bend in a different direction so you get to see that happen there and so I want all these bends going up out and up and so this now looks good here's the angle it's going to bend it up at and I'm going to go and hit apply I wish those a better preview so there it is it bent it up and I hit apply because I need to do that again apply again apply and again apply making sure to watch these arrows and making sure that I'm getting exactly what I'm looking for okay so um one more thing before I get out of this we use that line to create the bend right what if that line represent so right here it's the center of the bend right here it would be to start at the bend and right here it would be the end of the vent so that would place these spaces in different locations if you use these other options but we're assuming K is the center the vent so there you go we got a folded part from a 2d AutoCAD file and now I can use this part in assemblies right so you might be a legacy part that has been built in a while I'm ready to go with that one okay [Music] so very similarly we can go ahead and maybe import or open a step file so I'm going to go and find one here for us and so I think I have one here somewhere there we go so here's a step file got created somewhere else don't know where I'm going to go ahead and open this up okay so we're converting the models both by using a reference and there it is now I don't have sheetmetal features here in fact this part doesn't know it's you know going to be a shape metal component so I need to convert it okay and if I try to work with this and try to unfold it or add more features it simply won't let me okay it doesn't know how thick this is as opposed to the sheet metal people so sheet metal defaults say this should be point 1 to 0 okay so I can just you know uncheck this and instead of using the rule I can go and put in my own measurement right so I'm going to go ahead and choose here to measure this edge and it says hey it's one point six millimeters and I can get rid of this and let's see if this works so if that was correct I should be able to click create flat pattern and it should flatten out it does it so there's something wrong here I'm going to come back to this I'm going to delete my flat pattern if it shows up in the browser okay we'll talk about that just a sec but what's wrong here is that my measurement is a little bit off so if I use the measure tool and actually measure that edge I can go ahead and find the actual value by changing my position here to show all decimals so it said one point six millimeters when actually take that edge and measure it it's like one point six zero zero zero two and for that reason that's why I didn't in full because I would I went and put one point six it got to be exact so I'm going to go ahead and copy that value and now I can go to my sheetmetal defaults and paste in that large number and I should be able to unfold it now on top of maybe using other tools such as like the flange tool and adding more flanges I just still build on top of this and you can count on this now flattening out okay so legacy data you still add more features on top of this when you do create that flat pattern it shows up as a different object here in the browser and what you want to know here is if you ever delete this any drawings that reference that platform will also be gone so in this case here it will not it wouldn't repair itself so that's why I had to delete it now that it is folding I'm good to go and I shouldn't have to ever delete that flat pattern again okay so let's come back here and continue on here so the next phase of this is maybe creating some documentation so with that said I'm going to go ahead and take a cover here for the blower that we saw in one of the previous slides here and we're going to go ahead and start working with it so if we jump back to inventor we'll open that file up it should be this file here okay and we'll go ahead and open up this part all by itself okay so this is a sheet metal part we've added multiple bends here and an flanges we've added we've done all kinds of stuff here we've added holes probably projected from the assembly and first thing we need to do is just make sure there's a flat pattern so I'll go and choose here go to flat pattern beautiful what's it's it's flattening out again if I click on Bend order here okay this will show me the current Bend order and I don't remember right off the top of my head if it does this in the order of creation or maybe the backwards the reverse order it looks to me like it's a reverse order so these flanges probably got created laughs and so it's one two three four so they probably got created in the reverse order now I can change that order so if there's a machine very specifically needs to create maybe this bend as the first Bend I can go ahead and double click on that balloon and make this the first Bend right it should be unique however sometimes you could make it a duplicate number in case you know two bends it's actually get created at the same time right in one station so that becomes number one this becomes number two everything you know gets adjusted okay so you get control over that I don't know that you'll know that right off the top of your head the bend order but you can do that this goes back to documentation okay so okay great I've got a part here that I can work with and start documenting let's go and create a drawing and I'll use a 90 W not here and drawings or or get created the same way we use a base tool there's no special of sheet metal tools up here for that what is a little bit different is that when you actually browse out and find your sheet metal component you can document the folded 30 right or the flat so right now what I need is an isometric view of this component so I'm going to throw that up here I'll click OK and then I'll go ahead and create the flat so if I click on the base tool same part I want to document this at this time I want to go ahead and put the flat version and so if that's not the side I want to look at I can go ahead and rotate it again so again rotate it to where you want right and so I'm going to go and document the original side and while I'm at it I can go ahead and add in the Bendix extents of if there was punches in here so advanced topic for another day we could show those as well but I'll show you what the Bendix dents look like so if I click let's go to make this bigger so there we go so these lines are where the bend starts and ends and of course this is a centerline I changed my mind I set up and want those I'm going to go ahead and maybe right click and edit the view and I could remove the Bendix since okay so now it's time to document this you need to mention it as normal right so maybe the overall dimensions I can go ahead and put in here alright and if you did the math and try to add up the sides and every bed you know it'd be hard to get this number because it is applying the k-factor to this so just keep that in mind right the k-factor is going to change the overall dimension now there are sheet metal tools over here for annotation hole and thread no tools I don't know that that's really unique in terms of sheet metal but punch tool is definitely unique the chamfer tool bend nodes so that's I think the big one here so I could document these one by one I'm going to launch that tool and every time I pick a Bend I get some information you're going to bend this down 90 degrees with the radius of 0.12 that's according to the style right I'm according to how it was built when I do have that I'm going to zoom in and hit Enter or escape rather and I get a grip when I hover over this so I can go to pull this away and it becomes a leader no pointing to that band okay so you can do this one by one go to each one or here's another option I can click the table tools oh this is used typically to create just a table or rows ten columns you can put whatever information you want from this now if you pick the view it reads what's in the view in this case it's a sheet metal part and puts in information about sheet metal parts it's going to identify every Bend and give it an alphabetical ID or a numeric so I'm going to go ahead and go with the defaults here but we're going to see Bend IV Direction angle radius I'll click OK and I've got a little table right that identifies each band which direction the bend angle and the radius now when I look at the actual bends there number that identified here has been 3/4 and it's using that order that we talked about earlier so now if I hover I can go ahead and drag this out and you know create leader text here pointing to these bends and work with that so folded or flattened you've got geometry that you can now document and work with okay so one last note I'm sure you know somebody wants to know you know how do I get this to my CNC machine maybe it's a laser cutter or water jet or something like that I'm going to go back to the original part and one of the things you could do right away is go to this flat pattern that you see in the browser right click and you can check out the extent or you can save this a DWG file or DXF file rather and so there it is and this will have the flattened version which you see there as a DXF you could save it anywhere you want and then use it in your CNC machine ok so just a little bonus there I'm going to get back to this here right and just kind of summarize some of the things we talked about this is a real just an introductory thing in terms of what we're covering so we talked about setting up using though sheetmetal defaults right making sure that we have the right parameters then radiuses thicknesses unfold rules those were the more important things there and [Music] you could model from scratch we started to do that with that very first example I didn't get too far in this or better yet do it in context where it's fixed where it functions right and that way make sure you meet that that function requirements and if you have you know other files such as you know solvers files step files DWG files you can still create a model from those and you know create usable parts that you can use in your assemblies creating flat patterns is just a click away from that so if you're in that that model you can click on that button you should get a flat founder if you don't start to look at things that might give you some issues typically its thickness right there's a few other things that you can look for as well again we can send you some information on some of those best practices with that we'll go and make those available to you guys but maybe the last thing is creating the the documentation so creating drawings is almost identical to creating drawing with a regular part with the exception of a few tools tools for annotation tools for creating use to create those flat versions so with that said we're going to go ahead and wrap it up here and just maybe open it up for some of the questions that came up during the presentation so Nigel I'm not sure if you've already kind of flagged some or maybe maybe you've already answered some of those there's a few that have come in but before we get questions just want to remind you guys if you do have any go type them in um but we are also working right now on a on a proposal for a accelerated sheet metal class so we already do have a training class for sheet metal specifically you can take either one or two days it's a standard training class but we're working on something as like a half-day online kind of deal so definitely be on the lookout for that via email or let us know if you're interested in something like that via the survey there's a box there for other I'm definitely let us know so there are a couple of questions in here already one that came up a lot is fact that Hobbs got this really cool tool that makes arrows on his screen because you must share what that is yeah Google Microsoft zoom it okay free tool I use it all the time to teach and do stuff it's got a bunch of other functionality as well but it's a free tool it's easy to use maybe it to teach look at zoom it it's all one word from Microsoft yep zo OMI yeah yeah I asked how about that a couple weeks ago and so my name is not using a little bit more but yeah it's super cool and I get that answered a couple of people's questions no I'm super interested in what you're using initially I thought it was like Snagit or something um another question is uh it's in regard to the documentation the text size is super small how do you go about changing that oh so the only reason the text size was small just so you know is because the paper was huge it was like a C or D size paper so don't let that fool you right it was just it was probably an eighth inch tall but it didn't look right look at right so I'll go ahead and take a quick peek at that and get back to the drawing okay and so again this is probably an eighth inch tall but we can double click here and you know this is all coming from styles so there are styles that say hey these notes look a certain way you can go here and maybe change a few things about the the precision settings like that so what you're going to want to do is right click edit the style right click on that edit that dimension style now obviously if this was like this size on the a size sheet here run into some issues but if you're going to print this thing out in like 30 by 40 something like that big like table kind of size um make sense yeah so which you'll note is that it's a dimension type and the dimension type calls out a leader style if you go to that leaders out you eventually you get the text style and so I'll go now to the leader style and you know you'll eventually get to a textile which will probably you know somewhere underneath the text label text note text and this is where you would change that and so I want to say it's no text I'm going to change this to be like one-inch and I think it'll be very tough parent right I'll change this one - yeah so it was note text that it was set to so one of these labels or dimensions is at the note text now keep in mind that I just changed it to one inch anything else that was using that textile dimension to be huge there's now going to be huge but that is that's one way to quickly get to that and you can see in relationships and leaders way way too small but you know keep in mind to that hey we're looking at a very large piece of paper so they should be an 8-inch yeah if you're going to print this on an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of paper then make sense to kind of edit your styles and we do have a video in regards to styles specifically that we did probably a year ago or so but it's on our youtube channel here if you're interested something like that a question is there a way to bend a semi spherical shape like a spoon the answer is no so that's that's a good question so if it's if it's bending on one axis you can certainly do that if it's so a cone there's a good example it's got one axis you can unfold that you can unfold that no problem but anything that's spherical right is really bold is really folding on multiple axis and if you think about the manufacturing process it's being formed so formed parts typically can't be unfolded in any tool and and you might find one that will do it but I think it's usually with the caveat that the flat pattern is not correct so hopefully that answers that question in regards to our fusion 360 users question when the sheet metal in fusion 360 get officially released it's already out not officially there is a way to go through the options and request access to sheet metal in the beta form but expect to see that in infusion xxx few weeks an actual lives sheetmetal um area and page efficiency so it's like together the next couple of weeks don't know when the exact date is but it's something that they've been working on alright next question does inventor or Autodesk offer tools for sheet metal optimization for the shop to improve yield nesting so mething software so there's there's lots of nesting software out there I want to say yes and I just don't remember the name look it's true that's true next yeah that's what it is that's exact are you net yeah and we could probably take a quick peek at that that makes sense so they're with me and I'll show you what that looks like while I'm throwing that let me grab a couple more questions here do you have any tips or suggestions as to how to reconcile inventors Bend allowances in other settings with specific specific fabrication equipment in layman's terms I guess how to make sure the flat pattern inventor forms up properly in the real world this person would love to know if there's specific procedure for this other than trial and error yeah so so excellent question by the way I've got the true nest site up and you can see if there it's TR u n est take a look at it google it if you you won't miss it there but them yes they have that tool available so something to take a look at so basically I know one of the things that happens on a bend by Bend basis you know you could have different machines bending this and so different K factors get applied and so if I go back to the folded a version of this component you know there's several features here one is the face you're a set of flanges if I edit this flange or edit this feature you know we could say that at this point when we're adding you know these four or five flanges around the the edges here you know that this because it's being used on a different machine gets a different rule if you will so if I get to the bend option here oh sorry unfold rule I can create five six six seven eight nine ten different unfold options until it you know for that Bend use this Bend compensation table okay and that's unique to that feature so it's taken a while because it's actually recalculating the flat pattern as we go so next feature okay another flange here I edit that feature and I take a look at the unfold options and from my list of you know various unfold options I use a different rule right and that rule would you can easily name it to correspond with the was a machine that's actually bending that and the proper K factor for that specific machine so that's the only way that I know of I can imagine some logic being applied to this I think would be cool where you could launch the tool and before you even start applying this already have tools that are preset for this machine or that machine to correspond with that K Packer now extracting the K factor different different class for that but there's a bit of information out there on how to do that you can literally Bend the tool extract the K factor by taking some measurements and basically it's the difference between the original flat version and the folded version when you measure the lengths of the legs you'll get a K factor that you can extract with that yep cool I think that's it for questions for now but if anyone does have anything definitely shoot that in right now like I mentioned we are having we do have a catalog class for sheet metal that is lecture style or hands-on definitely let us know if that's something to interest you also like I mentioned we're going to be doing a condensed class probably half day or so online that will make available to everyone so expect to see an email about that in the next few days or maybe early next week I'm just going to finalize some particular details about that um we got another question I missed the initial 15 minutes could you get catch me up on that um let's do it again yeah let's start all over again now let's go actually this is being recorded right now so when you're watching this later hi mom but yeah it is being recorded it will be put on our YouTube channel so you can definitely watch it over again on a youtube channel I know a lot of people get pulled in and out to meetings or conversations can't necessarily say put for an hour most times so definitely check out our youtube channel at youtube.com slash khatib technologies the video should be up probably this afternoon early tomorrow barring any craziness shut up to air Paul who's the editor for all of these so with that I think that should be everything let me just make sure and yeah it'll be just about everything Hobbs so like I mentioned if you've got anything definitely shoot us an email question to conceive comm or a phone call and we'll be more than happy to help you out so with that thanks everyone for joining us today thanks all for spending some time with us this morning bit all thank you and we hope to see you next week next week we're going to be going over workspace customization in AutoCAD so those people who maybe missed their classic workspace idea one to go to for you so yeah with that we'll see you all next week and have a great weekend you

Channel: KETIV Technologies

Views: 79,823

Keywords: Inventor, Autodesk Inventor (Software), Autodesk Inventor, Inventor 2016, Inventor Professional 2016, Autodesk Inventor Pro 2016, Inventor Pro 2016, Inventor Pro, KETIV, KETIV AVA, KETIV Technologies Inc, Autodesk Virtual Academy, AVA, Inventor 2018, Inventor 2017, Autodesk Inventor 2018, Autodesk Inventor 2017, Inventor Drawings, Autodesk drawing, Sheet Metal, Inventor Sheet metal, autodesk, ketiv, autodesk inventor drawing, autodesk presentation, autodesk tips

Id: wMrZ-nHitSo

Length: 66min 6sec (3966 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2017