Flattening a Full Formed Part

[mwimberly]

I have a sheetmetal part that has been formed, the entire part. When I try to flatten the form it says it can't do it. Any insight on what I am doing wrong, a method to do it or telling me it can't be done would be much appreciated.

TIA

Michael Wimberly
Engineering Applications Support Specialist III
Security & Survivability

BAE Systems Land & Armaments
9113 Le Saint Drive
Fairfield, Ohio 45014 U.S.A.
(513) 881-4843 Direct
(513) 833-3565 Mobile
(513) 881-5087 Fax
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P Before printing, think about the environment.


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[mwimberly]

A lot of the suggestions that I received was to try and unbend it. That method is not possible, there are no bends.

Think of it like this:

Take banana shaped piece of sheetmetal and form it to fit around a large spherical shape. There is no flat area on it and has some type of rotation in every directions because of the conforming to the sphere. It is a single flat piece that is formed. No additional features other than a axis.

Hope this helps make it a little bit better to understand.

Michael Wimberly
Engineering Applications Support Specialist III
Security & Survivability

BAE Systems Land & Armaments
9113 Le Saint Drive
Fairfield, Ohio 45014 U.S.A.
(513) 881-4843 Direct
(513) 833-3565 Mobile
(513) 881-5087 Fax
-<">mailto:->
P Before printing, think about the environment.

[JohnDugan]

The command to flatten a form is at Insert/Shape/Flatten Form... But all this will do is, indeed, flatten the form feature(s) you reference in the definition for that operation. It is similar to an unbend of the formed shape, being a separate feature in the tree, but it does nothing in regards to developing any kind of "pre-formed" blank size.

Hope that helps.