Cross Break in Sheet metal

[pbenoit]

Good morning,

I was wondering if there was a cross break tool or how to get cross break lines accross a part. I come from solidworks knowledge so I am learning as I go along and they have a crossbreak button under their flanges, I was wondering if they had anything like that for creo.

thanks,

Peter

[Mahesh_Sharma]

I don't have much information about Solidworks, however after searching cross break for solidworks on google, it is confirmed that there is no tool available for that. 

I don't know how far this will help, still you may try using Cosmetic Sketch, available under Engineering group in Sheetmetal module. 

[pbenoit]

Yes this is what I am referring to. It creates a bend using the corners of the flat part so strengthen the material.

[dschenken]

I was amused to read on this page: http://sheetmetal.me/tooling-terminology/cross-break/

"Most design softwares with respectable sheet metal packages will have a specific Cross Break function."

Creo is more of a solid modeler than a sheet-metal package. The reason is that there are too many tweaks in sheet-metal that are tooling dependent and do not affect realizable parts. So, on the same page, they mention:

"Trying to add one bend across the path of another will obviously be difficult for your software to handle so typically they will just draw the bend lines without deforming the metal."

[StephenW]

I'm my sheetmetal days, I would just sketch the lines in the cross break. Not an ideal solution.

Either the model doesn't show real finished geometry for dimesioning or the model is not able to be unbent. One way or the other it's problematic.

I suppose creo isn't respectable.

[pbenoit]

I know it is a basic function but creo's sheetmetal tool is quite powerful, but does things differently than the solidworks sheetmetal module. I learned with solidworks but now I work with creo so I am figuring things out and this was one of my questions. 

I am going to leave this topic open to see if anyone figures it out on how to do crossbreaks simply without having to sketch the lines in yourself.

thanks for the help!

[psobejko · Accepted solution]

Although it's not part of the core functionality, you can "easily" make a UDF (user-defined-feature) that makes such repetitive tasks a snap.  For-example, this UDF creates a sketch showing the cross-diagonals and also a pyramid like surface on top of a 4-sided face defined by the bottom and top edges.  So you select the bottom edge, the surface on which to place the sketch and the top edge and voila:

 to use: unzip the attached file; then use the User Defined Feature function in the Model tab / Get Data group, then select the sheetmetal_cross_break file from wherever you extracted the zip file contents.   Follow the prompts, it's pretty straightforward.  Note: UDF was built in Creo 3.0.

[pbenoit]

Thanks!