Change dirction of bends in flat pattern

bryan_lagrange

@lana, @scott_harris I had an idea to have the flat pattern in the drawing be placed in the drawing with direction you need.

Onshape automatically creates a flat pattern. If a Direction column were added to the bend chart you could see how the flat patten in oriented. If the chart has the direction as up and you need it to have the direction as down (material finish reasons) You could toggle the view cube to bottom then right click and have a command such as set as default. Default would be the view you need the flat to be represented in the drawing. When changing the orientation and setting the new default, the chart would change from up to down or down to up depending on what you had previous.

Something like this:



The other option I would like to see added is the ability to change the angle callout from outside(default) to inside. I need the inside call out for press brake purposes. Sorry for the wierd angles, I did a quick sketch and extrude to create these screen shots.



What do you guys think?

Thank you for all your help

Bryan Lagrange

brucebartlett

Yes, I think it would be good to be able to flip the direction.  This is an important thing that has to be considered for a lot of design's, especially stainless steel sheet with PVC covering brushed finishes. It would be also nice to see if the bend is going up or down.

One other request I have is the ability to be able to reorder the bends to the sequence which would be used by the operator and even have backstop settings based on these sequences. 

lana

@bryan_lagrange
Thank you for your suggestion.I'll give it more thought.

@brucebartlett
The "move up", "move down" options in context menu are there to allow reordering : 

brucebartlett

@lana ahh! yes, I'd forgotten about the RMB move. 

bryan_lagrange

@lana Just checking to see if you guys had anymore thoughts, suggestions, implementation (crossing fingers) of this idea?

lana

@bryan_lagrange
Thank you for checking in. Thoughts and suggestions - yes, not enough cycles to get to implementations - alas! If you have any additional thoughts, please voice them. 

romeograham

I would also like to be able to specify the "front" of a sheet metal part. I use sheet metal for labels on containers - when it comes to show the flat pattern (of the die line) on a drawing, I almost always have to select the other view to get the die line to be oriented correctly in the drawing. Usually, I have to select Bottom view, then rotate the drawing view 180 degrees.

Thanks!

lana

@romeo_graham392
Thank you.

bryan_lagrange

Checking to see if this is still on the table.

lana

We keep trying to get to it - too many other things take priority. Sorry.

bryan_lagrange

@lana. Thank you for the reply...I guess I will ask again in another few months.

lana

@bryan_lagrange
 Thank you for your patience. Please keep popping this up.

shawn_crocker

Can't wait for this. Are other CNC programmers not bothered by the inability to define which face is the good side? It seems weird we can't do it and simple to just add in. I mean, how did development not think of this when they were first writing the code for sheet metal? It seems like one of those abilities like being able to feel the bottom of your feet while walking that shouldn't need to be asked for. Anyone know of custom features that can do this?

jonathan_b

This has come up repeatedly when I order sheetmetal parts. I use OSHcut which has some pretty slick software that allows the designer to upload a dxf, and then pick out and specify bend lines culminating in a rough animation of the part being bent in their press brake. Very useful for getting a quote fast / validating design. However, the brake (and software) takes the angles for bends on the inside (complementary angle) not the outside. I did a pretty large job with these folks, and was a little miffed that I couldn't use the bend table or the flat pattern drawing. As neither gave an option for flipping that angle. It resulted in a lot of double checking angles and my ignoring two nice pieces of the sheetmetal suite!
So I definitely throw in my plus one for the ability to switch from outside angle to inside angle (supplementary to complementary)
Something that is related, but more of a curiosity.... I recall from solidworks (maybe wrongly because it has been a year or so) that depending on the faces selected on a part, the angle reported at the measure/distance readout would be either inside or outside...depending on if the faces where on the inside or outside. This seemed at the time unnoticeable -- but when I went to order my first sheetmetal part with onshape I was having trouble figuring out what bend the table was reporting -- because no matter what faces you select.. onshape will always report the inside angle.

Thanks,

Bruns

bryan_lagrange

@jonathan_b , @caden_armstrong created this feature script to help with this issue.

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/82090#Comment_82090

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/21bdd45df173be76b7137ad3/w/274bdde4b0fe5b2f04ab3bf9/e/3f10440f01c4a60171a49c65

phares_blank

This is important to me as well and would be nice to have as a native option.

aris_setyawan

This will be very helpful for friends who are used to using sheet metal for the bending process, as it minimizes errors during the bending process, while manual editing in other 2D software will also waste time.

I hope this feature will be implemented soon.