Fuergrissa
New member
Hello, I'm not a pro, I've only had one class on solidworks and have no experience with sheet metal tools until tonight. Trying to help a buddy design a bumper for his truck and I like the idea of using SM tools to design the bumper, then unfold it in order to have a design for the plasma table.
In any case I'm hung up, so I'll try to explain my part, then I have a pic of the napkin drawing I'm working off of and the SW file I am working on.
I started by sketching in the top plane the profile I want then made that a base flange. On the front plane I don't want the bumper flat from left to right, but somewhat similar to a smiley face, so I did a sketch of material I wanted remove and extrude cut. Now for the tricky part. Even though there are only straight edges between each bend, the upper and lower edges are not flat across in any dimension, so when I go to do an edge flange across the entire top or bottom at 45deg I have many overlaps, or edges that are spread apart. As I go to complete the edge flange I get an error about bend overlap, but it will still build with errors. when I select trim bends however, it will not even build. so I go about trying to clean up where the edge flanges are supposed to meet, however wihen I try to close the corners, they still won't meet up, presumably because the bends are on different axis. where the edge flanges overlap I also have the same problem where I cannot get them to meet up properly.
I would really appreciate some help or advice. I don't think my design is complex by any means, but I really need the sheet metal tools to figure out the angles I need to cut into the plate so that they will line up close after they are bent.
part file
2011-03-31_051804_bumper.zip
can't get the picture to upload yet, will edit post when I do, but it probably won't be much help anyway.
Thanks in advance, I'd really like to figure this out, not just to finish this, but for future knowledge also. thanks.
In any case I'm hung up, so I'll try to explain my part, then I have a pic of the napkin drawing I'm working off of and the SW file I am working on.
I started by sketching in the top plane the profile I want then made that a base flange. On the front plane I don't want the bumper flat from left to right, but somewhat similar to a smiley face, so I did a sketch of material I wanted remove and extrude cut. Now for the tricky part. Even though there are only straight edges between each bend, the upper and lower edges are not flat across in any dimension, so when I go to do an edge flange across the entire top or bottom at 45deg I have many overlaps, or edges that are spread apart. As I go to complete the edge flange I get an error about bend overlap, but it will still build with errors. when I select trim bends however, it will not even build. so I go about trying to clean up where the edge flanges are supposed to meet, however wihen I try to close the corners, they still won't meet up, presumably because the bends are on different axis. where the edge flanges overlap I also have the same problem where I cannot get them to meet up properly.
I would really appreciate some help or advice. I don't think my design is complex by any means, but I really need the sheet metal tools to figure out the angles I need to cut into the plate so that they will line up close after they are bent.
part file
2011-03-31_051804_bumper.zip
can't get the picture to upload yet, will edit post when I do, but it probably won't be much help anyway.
Thanks in advance, I'd really like to figure this out, not just to finish this, but for future knowledge also. thanks.