Sheet metal flat pattern still clunky

Nick Van Laar

 I'm not sure how this is considered a final product.  The flat pattern creation is still VERY rudimentary and clunky.  The automatic dims/annotations are placed in bad locations and the flat pattern needs to be exploded to fix the problems.  Why are the dims/annotations automatic?  Why does the flat pattern still have depth?  It should be a simple 2D representation of what the plat pattern would look like.  Is there any plan in the future to have the flat pattern tied to/update with changes to the part? 

The sheet metal part creation is superb, but the flat pattern creation/implementation is not good.  The flat pattern is important.  It's what most fabricators use in the shop so it needs to be done right.

Nick Van Laar

 To really be on feature parity with other sheet metal CAD packages, a user needs to be able to create drawings like this one in an easy fashion.

Sample sheet metal.jpg

Kerry Brown

@Nick Van Laar:

 To really be on feature parity with other sheet metal CAD packages, < ... >

Which package is your piccy from Nick ?

Jason Bourhill

There is an option with SMUNFOLD to export the flattened profile out to DXF in 2D using the 'Save 2D Geometry' option. You can jump straight to this if you use SMEXPORT2D instead. The dimensions are generated using the current dimension style. Layer Colours (not names) can be configured in SETTINGS under Sheet metal.

I would hope that the Sheet Metal development team take a look at the method used for generating a BIMSECTION. This generates a report from the 3d model to a separate .dwg file (not .dxf) based on a pre-set template. This also creates a link between the two files, which allows you to quickly update the generated view. If they adopted this method it would give a similar result to you given example.


Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

Nick Van Laar

@Kerry Brown:

Which package is your piccy from Nick ?

3DSystems Geomagic Design (formerly Alibre).  Not quite as slick as SW or Inventor, but very good for the money.  It is a little more money than BricsCAD, but it is a full history based parametric modeler. 

Geomagic_Sheet_metal.png

Nick Van Laar

@Jason Bourhill:

There is an option with SMUNFOLD to export the flattened profile out to DXF in 2D using the 'Save 2D Geometry' option. You can jump straight to this if you use SMEXPORT2D instead. The dimensions are generated using the current dimension style. Layer Colours (not names) can be configured in SETTINGS under Sheet metal.

This is helpful to know.  Thank you.

I am not quite convinced the sheet metal module is actually ready for prime time.  Again, the part creation is fantastic!  It's the working drawing creation that is lacking.