Sheetmetal Flange

gordon_ross588 · November 4

I am a Solid Edge user but have been migrating to Onshape over that last couple of months.

Loving Onshape but Solid Edge has a function called Contour flange that which sometimes is preferable to the Flange tool in Onshape.

Contour Flange in SE allows me to quickly turn this sketch:

into this:

In Onshape I need to do something like this:

and build up the bends one at a time to look like this:

But that is cumbersome when I want to quickly convert sketch geometry into a few flanges.

My question is, is there another approach to this which I have missed?

Really like Onshape by the way.

And chapeau to whoever created the 'Shaped Flange' custom feature. I don't think I would be using Onshape without it.

Best Regards. Gordon

martin_kopplow · November 4

Have you tried modeling it first, then convert to sheet metal part?

bryan_lagrange · November 4

Would love to have a contour flange feature in Onshape

eric_pesty · November 4

Yes this tool would come in handy for sure…

I would have to go with what @martin_kopplow said: Onshape favors defining a solid first and using thicken/convert to create sheet metal.

I now start most sheet metal models with a solid shape, then convert and then add some flanges details as needed.

Here an example of how that works:

https://youtu.be/ph4SHnB1AZg?t=30

And this is taking it "to the extreme":

https://youtu.be/NLwCGwHd2tE?t=139

gordon_ross588 · November 4

Hi Martin. Thanks for your help. I nearly always start my parts with a basic extrusion which I convert to SM. This work pretty well

But as the part evolves and it's necessary to add detail and flanges in my Solid Edge/Solid Works brain the contour flange would be useful.

To illustrate, this is the simple part where I started to scratch my head:

The part is basically converted to sheetmetal from a model. But I'm not sure I could have converted to curled bit on the RHS even if I had predicted it.

Thanks for the feedback. Gordon

gordon_ross588 · November 4

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/122877#Comment_122877

Hello Martin. Thanks for the reply.

In general I start my parts with a converted model, like the simple part above. As the design evolves though it is necessary to add flanges and other details. It's the curled edge on the RHS when I started scratching my head. In my Solid Edge/Solidworks brain this is a very simple thing (as shown in original post). I have also tried to create another adjacent part and booleaning them together which works, but the result doesn't flatten successfully.

Thanks for your help.