Solid features of non-constant wall thickness

Ok, way, way back in the days of yore, the days of BWF (Before Wildfire) you had the option of adding solid features to sheetmetal that were of a different thickness than the base sheetmetal wall. An example application would be an extruded hole acting as a boss on a sheetmetal part.



There were a few different ways to do this, creating a solid feature directly on the sheetmetal part, placing a previously created UDF onto the sheetmetal part, creating a surface feature on the sheetmetal part and then making it solid (this was particularily useful when creating a pattern with a lot of pattern instances).



Now in Wildfire, it seems that they have removed the functionality of adding solid features to sheetmetal parts (see my previous posts).



My question is, has anyone found a way/work around to create features on a sheetmetal part that were of a different/varying thickness from the base wall feature?



I have been pulling what is left of my hair out on this one.



Lazar

Lazar,

I don't think there is an easy way. Are these features added to the part during manufacturing or is this some type of form feature?



Js

Js,



It is not really a form feature in the sense that you can add it to the Pro/E model directly from clicking an icon or selecting it from an Insert menu, but it is (was) a way to create a feature that would be a better representation of the actual manufactured part.



When manufacturing this feature on a part, the material from the sheetmetal is extruded through the hole and the material is essentially drawn through to the desired depth, rather than punched through like a plain hole. The physical thickness of the material at this extruded hole would be less than the thickness of the sheetmetal.



To let you know, I did some digging into my old Pro/E doc.s, and I found a PTC training manual for Pro/Sheetmetal 2000i. They actually had a whole chapter devoted to sheetmetal features of non-uniform thickness.



Not apparently clear why they removed this functionality from Wildfire.



Lazar