Getting the overall dimension of blank without flat pattern

[ptc-4620431]

We are facing a problem with sheetmetal. I need the surface area, overall length/breadth of the blank shape of the part. Also the Description of the part should be like "Name x length x breadth x thickness". Now it is possible by using feature parameters in "Flat Pattern". But all the sheetmetal parts in the assembly have unflatten parts (family table instance without flat pattern). All the parts are connected to skelton and updated when the parameters in skelton changed.

But the problem starts when we update the skelton. As the "flat pattern" feature is suppressed in the instances used to create the assembly, the corresponding parameters will not get updated and thereby the Surface Area, Length, Width & Description in BOM is not updating.

We tried the below methods to solve the problem.

1) Open each sheetmetal parts - resume the "flat pattern" - regenerate - suppress - save

But this is a time consuming work and it kills the entire concept of automation. Again manual error happens a lot as the users miss some parts

2) We create unbend all - measure length - save as feature - measure width - save as feature - bend back all.

Then we use the parameters in the measure feature to create the required output. But this method is tiresome to build as we have some 50-60 sheetmetal parts in an assembly and we have to create approx 750 assemblies.

Can anybody suggest a method to find the overall length/width of blank shape (available in flat preview) and connect it to some part parameters without using flat pattern or unbend-measure

Regards

Basil Paulose

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[dschenken]

I'm sympathetic. The best thing is to remove non-design information from the drawing, but I know how that goes.

It seems like you are putting effort into placing manufacturing information onto the drawing.

Eventually someone is going to have to create a flat pattern of each of the parts and will then have to set up to cut out the parts. Unless they are all simple rectangles, they should also be performing a nesting operation, which means that simple length and width measures won't give a useful estimate of actual material usage. Also, some parts of the sheet they are cut from won't be useable as you can't cut to the edge.

You can get a good estimate for area by dividing part volume by material thickness so there's that.

If this is an ongoing problem, creating template models with some common features as your second method describes could get you a long way. Pesky that there's that preview that looks like it could work.

[ptc-4620431]

Thanks David to understand our situation.

We tried creating template model. Created a part - Unbend - measure - bend back. Then we suppressed the last four features starting from unbend. Then deleted the construction features by suspending the suppressed features. Then we used it to create another geometry. But when we resume the suppressed features, it failed.

I can understand why measure failed. But cant understand why Unbend-all and bend-back-all failed. These commands should be independent of the geometry reference.

Creating generic models which can be reused is something we are using now. But that is not doing the job of start part with relations.

If there is no way to get the overall length/width, is it possible to request PTC to add those in the next version/ datecode.