Hi
I'm fairly new to Solidworks, being self-taught through forums, tutorials and You Tube videos. I've managed some quite complex product designs, but I'm totally stumped on my present problem, and would dearly love some advice from those who are able to help.
The problem is one of sheet metal manipulation. I have a sheet metal blank that is 16mm wide x 54.48 mm long (to give 15mm I/D when rolled) x 1.8mm thick. On each end of this blank, I have one male and one female dovetail, such that when the blank (56mm long with male dovetail) is produced on a press-tool, the dovetails will interlock and hold the short tube in the closed condition. There are other features in the tube, which I can succesfully produce, and that make it neccessary to join the tube in this way.
The problem is the effective overlap that is created by the dovetail
features. Error messages indicate to me that the ends are not in the
same plane.
I have tried all ways of producing this form, from converting a solid to sheet metal, and adding/cutting the dovetails, to drawing it as sheet metal. All to no avail. It seems that all methods I can find relate to a sheet metal tube that is flattened. I want to draw it flat, and then bend it. Is this possible?
Please help.
Your frustratedly
Dave R
I'm fairly new to Solidworks, being self-taught through forums, tutorials and You Tube videos. I've managed some quite complex product designs, but I'm totally stumped on my present problem, and would dearly love some advice from those who are able to help.
The problem is one of sheet metal manipulation. I have a sheet metal blank that is 16mm wide x 54.48 mm long (to give 15mm I/D when rolled) x 1.8mm thick. On each end of this blank, I have one male and one female dovetail, such that when the blank (56mm long with male dovetail) is produced on a press-tool, the dovetails will interlock and hold the short tube in the closed condition. There are other features in the tube, which I can succesfully produce, and that make it neccessary to join the tube in this way.
The problem is the effective overlap that is created by the dovetail
features. Error messages indicate to me that the ends are not in the
same plane.
I have tried all ways of producing this form, from converting a solid to sheet metal, and adding/cutting the dovetails, to drawing it as sheet metal. All to no avail. It seems that all methods I can find relate to a sheet metal tube that is flattened. I want to draw it flat, and then bend it. Is this possible?
Please help.
Your frustratedly
Dave R