Converting "Welded Sheet Metal Assembly" into its component sheet metal parts

conorbyrne

I am try to convert a "finished" welded sheet metal assembly back into its 2 component sheet metal part (highlighted in red and blue). What is the best way to do this? I do not have access to any original files, only this finished one with 1 single whole part.

I am currently attempting to create planes and use the split feature, but it's just not working nicely given that not everything is at a 90 deg angle, and it's producing sheet metal with angled edges. I'm now manually editing these, moving faces, extrude cutting weird stuff. Without doing any of this stuff, the convert to sheet metal function just does not work well, and changes the geometry.

Is there a better way to make this into sheet metal parts that I can get manufactured?

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

Select the outside faces and use thicken instead of convert. Convert is more used for things like selecting all of the outside faces of a solid like a cube than this kind of geometry.

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

@conorbyrne here's an example document I set up using the sheet metal feature set to thicken instead of convert. The corners of the back face needed a little bit of joint modification to get the sides to clean up but all you need to do to get those to work right is click on the rip style in the sheet metal context in the right window and switch it to one of the butt joint styles.