Sheet metal design: eight quick tips to improve your technique
When you are working in sheet metal design, you face a series of unique challenges. Although parts are typically designed in their formed state, they begin as a flat plate or sheet. As a result, manufacturability becomes a critical aspect of every feature making up the finished part. Add to this the need to account for material thickness, along with bend and corner relief, miter deformation features and critical dimensions (inside or outside), and it’s easy to see where challenges can arise.
This white paper describes eight tips to improve your design techniques, increase productivity, and get your sheet metal designs done accurately, quickly, and easily.What’s inside Eight ways to improve your sheet metal design?Get the most out of your CAD solution when working with sheet metal, with techniques to help you:- Save time and avoid redundancy in sheet metal design
- Properly calculate bends
- Create manufacturing-ready sheet metal flat patterns
- Reduce your number of features
- Improve your speed and flexibility
- And much more…
Sheet metal technology in Solid EdgeGood techniques can help improve performance, but they’re only half of the equation. When you take the potential complexity of sheet metal design into consideration, it becomes obvious that you need a highly specialized set of tools if real productivity and quality gains are to be realized, from design through manufacturing.A core design capability of Solid Edge is the Sheet Metal environment, which provides an entire design-through-fabrication workflow, using streamlined synchronous modeling methods tailored to the unique needs of sheet metal design. Unlike general-purpose CAD tools, Solid Edge includes sheet metal-specific features, like Emboss, Dimple, Drawn Cutout, Bead, Contour Flange, Straight Brake, and Etch. And with integrated applications for analysis, NC programming, and related tasks, Solid Edge helps you speed design time, improve quality, and reduce costs.
Learn more about Four considerations when working with sheet metal.
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