How to create a notched bend in a sheet metal part?

jim_wilson436

I'd like to incorporate a "notched bend", as illustrated below, in a sheet metal part where a cutout needs to be closer to a bend than the bend clearance would normally allow. But every approach I've tried so far has been horribly clumsy, requiring several features and sketches, moving faces, etc. Can you think of an elegant way to do this?

dirk_van_der_vaart

Something like this, first make the bend and then extrude in the flat view

jim_wilson436

Interesting, but how do you "unbend" the extruded bit?

S1mon

If you cut away the bend in the flat view, you can extrude the non bent tab and it works. I really have barely touched the sheet metal tools in Onshape, but this is very cool how easy this is to do. I imagine if you were doing this all the time, it might be worth having a custom feature script to automate some of this,

Keep in mind that things that are half-sheers or rips in sheet metal often behave better in Onshape (and other Parasolid based CAD programs) with a tiny gap. It can be microscopic, but there needs to be a little gap.

jim_wilson436

To be fair, I *have* been able to create the desired geometry. Here is an example. But my solution feels inelegant to me, requiring several steps, including an awkward face move and manually constructed bend reliefs.

jim_wilson436

@S1mon Ah, I see. Similar to what I did in the 3D view: cut away the bend and make a tab. (Sorry about the discontinuity, I posted my attempt from a stale view of this page, and didn't see your post until I refreshed the page.)

Thanks for the ideas.

wayne_sauder

@jim_wilson436
Just another way to do it. 
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/685ca4a1228e3b6106ed4ab3/w/5edc18bc39110f1cf90d70c1/e/7cca3db60c51b022ea8c9619