Mirror half sheet metal part

[b-nappi]

Is it possible to mirror half of a sheet metal part?  We often create solid parts in half, copy solid geometry, mirror the quilt, and solidify the quilt.  Is there a way to do something similar to this with a sheet metal part?  It seems that the solidify tool only wants to cut material away in a sheet metal part.  

[Mahesh_Sharma]

@b-nappi

There is a mirror in Sheetmetal as well.

Create first half, Select  part name in model tree > Mirror 

[dgschaefer · Accepted solution]

---

@Mahesh_Sharma wrote:

@b-nappi

There is a mirror in Sheetmetal as well.

Create first half, Select  part name in model tree > Mirror 

---

That's a more robust way of mirroring solid parts as well.  Skips the surface copy step before mirroring and the solidify step after.

[b-nappi]

Thanks for the responses @Mahesh_Sharma @dgschaefer.  I think the reason we've avoided that kind of mirror is that it pulls the whole master with it, but I don't think that will a problem. 

[dgschaefer]

Yes, it mirrors everything, so you get all the datums and surface features too.  Your original method does produce a geometry only mirror, which has its advantages.

[KenFarley]

There is a huge advantage to mirroring the entire part rather than selected features. If you later find that you wish to have another feature (a cut, or maybe some holes, etc) in the pre-mirrored part, you can just insert them into the part prior to the mirror, and voila, they are in the mirrored part. Mirrors of discrete features do not allow you to add anything to the mirror, as far as I've been able to determine. In the days when I used them I had to delete the mirror, add the features, then create the mirror again. This screwed up drawings, assemblies, and anything else that was based upon the original mirrored stuff.

This has always made me sad, 'cause I find it a bit annoying that getting the mirrored geometry I want entails dragging along a bunch of mirrored datums, surfaces, and all the other baggage.

[dgschaefer]

Ken,

You are right, mirroring individual features carries significant disadvantages.  In addition to what you mention, mirroring a feature (or any dependent copy, actually) also locks the parent feature so that it cannot be redefined to reference new items.

However, neither methods discussed here are feature mirrors.  The OP said the method they use is to copy all solid geometry surfaces (If you use the "solid surfaces" intent group, it'll grab all solid surfaces with a single pick), mirror the resulting quilt and then solidifying it.  This results in a mirror of the whole part without the datums, surfaces and other non-solid geometry.  This might be a good method for your purposes.