I have been doing a study on this Creo 4 module, and there are some enhancements that I see as being needed. Being able to unbend is great for flex designs. However, when rigid/flex designs are considered the current implementation falls short of what I want to represent. Essentially it seems that PTC made a modified sheet metal design for representing the board which is a special .PRT . In order for unbending to work all features must be the same thickness. This is not the case in real world designs. Flex segments are thinner. The flex can come off of either side of the rigid board, out of a middle layer, or even from a combination, meaning that it is possible to have separate flex segments along the same edge coming off front/back/inner layers. Additionally, where connectors are placed there can be stiffeners that are a different thickness than the base board section. The minimum bend radius requirement of being driven from the board thickness is also not representative of the flex thickness in real world application.
The board needs to be treated as an inseparable assembly with different segments as subcomponents, or the current method needs to allow varying thicknesses through different areas of the design.
