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My team has been working at solving this problem for ages and we can't seem to find a suitable solution. Our fab shop uses formed part drawings instead of flat patterns for forming sheetmetal; they require dimensions for bends to reference the apex of a bend. This is normally fine, but when it comes to joggles, we're not able to come up with a method that works for engineering drawings and our press operators. I've attached a simple part showing the desired dimension and the dimensions that I'm able to achieve in a .dwg.
Has anyone managed to find a dimensioning method that produces the dimension in the attached "Model Example"?
My solution would be to keep the sketch you have in the model and then show the dimension.
Or, make the sketch with no dimensions and use the curve to create the dimension.
I think the sketch with no dimension would be the least problematic. Created dimension would just be driven from that.
You could create the model using the dimensions your manufacturing wants using construction geometry, not particularly good from a design standpoint.
Drawing sketch can be used but those are horribly unreliable from a update perspective
If you add datums to the bend on the part than you can reference them when creating the annotations for the dimension. No sketch is required, just the datum point referencing the bend surfaces. For a "joggle" it may require one more construction feature to locate the points, but it should work.
I can also conceive of writing relations that would position the datums based on the bend angles of the geometry forming the "joggle" which could be used to create a UDF that could automate this to some degree.
Is this what you are trying to show?
In drawing dtl file change option witness_line_intersection to yes, it's default value is no.
If I understand your need, you could create datum planes tangent to the bend and through the tangent line. This will let you dimension to the intersection of the datum plane and the surface.