Sheetmetal - Surface need to thicken

[Dale_Rosema]

This is similar to another question I posted:

http://communities.ptc.com/message/259618#259618

I am trying to make a sheetmetal part. In this situation, I started in sheetmetal and have the shape that I am looking for, but now I want to give the part thickness. How would this be accomplished.

Thanks, Dale

[Dale_Rosema]

I forgot to mention that the large flat surface is tapered from the tall vertical sides and gets narrow toward the small vertial sides.

[TomD.inPDX]

This is the beauty of being able to work in the flat with extrudes while in sheetmetal mode. I can optimize the punch setup by having long shear lengths and only 1 angle square punch. Of course, laser cutting doesn't have this limitation, but a lot of shops are still punching as their primary production process. If your design can tolerate these variances, this is certainly a good reason to use sheetmetal for parts that are not simply "cubical".

I still find many operations in sheetmetal limiting, but this is one thing that does provide significant freedom.

[Dale_Rosema · Accepted solution]

The method described by Steven in this thread:

http://communities.ptc.com/message/259669#259669

is the method that I ended up using and it worked well.

Thanks all for the quick tutorial on surfaces, thickening and sheetmetal.

Dale

[TomD.inPDX]

I hope PTC is paying attention to this thread.

Why do in sheetmetal what actually works in solid modeling and convert it after the fact