Applying bend reliefs to vertexes between rips and bends?
Working on yet another sheet metal script and I'm really close to completion on a build that's ready for deployment but I'm having issues getting bend relief geometry to generate on the ends of my bend segments of sheet metal parts. I suspect my issue is that I was trying to apply bend relief attributes to corners that are shared by rip geometry which is not a thing that happens in any other sheet metal feature as far as I can see. Is it even possible to apply bend relief geometry to vertices that correspond to both rips and bends or do I have to construct and subtract my relief cuts manually with some good old fashioned thicken > thicken > thicken > fillet > boolean chain like I did in my sample studio here?
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I'm sure your diagnostics is correct - we did not expect to support such a configuration. Since you are working directly with definition surface - you might be able to cut out the reliefs directly in it as to avoid an extra feature.
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@lana I was afraid that was gonna be the case. Was hoping to copy the bend relief style from the sheet metal definition of the target body so that whatever user settings people might have decided on for the rest of their model would apply to these bends as well for consistency. I suppose I can still extract the definition and manually re-draw the tool geometry to match.
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@Derek_Van_Allen_BD could you make the tabs angled to give it a stitched look when hand bending? Here is an example I did.
Would it be possible to have tabs as shown below that are twisted to lock in hand bent parts
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That geometry is probably incompatible with the way I'm developing this feature unless I get really clever about how to make those boolean tools. Twist tabs would be a different feature I'm interested in developing but that will require updates to how one of the sheet metal utilities functions for me to be able to get the twist to be represented without doing a Finish Sheet Metal as part of the operation. If I get the ability to substitute one tool body for a different tool body in the flat we could get there but there's not currently a mechanism for that.
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@bryan_lagrange I did come across this unpublished Wave Bend feature that someone was cooking up but the way they wrote their code relies on sketch logic and doesn't generalize to the already folded state of parts or whatever spline driven concoction my design department is gonna slide me next so I'm not expanding on their work. My general approach to feature development is to avoid the sketch solver and planar logic wherever possible.
Also there's this bender script that's pretty decent but leaves gaps that are too big and require a lot of filler on sheet metal when welding. Also found it didn't work on skewed geometry. And then this other sheet metal perforation script that has a lot of similar issues.1 -
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I'll have this one ready to publish in pretty short order too, the document is public so you can play around with it and let me know if you find a way to break it. Bend reliefs obviously aren't there yet but they'll be implemented before long.
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@lana actually I had another idea while my eyes were going crosseyed trying to handle all of the cases of curved surface to flat and work out how to construct the appropriate surfaces. Instead of splitting my sheet metal edges into bend-rip-bend-rip I could split them into bend-null-rip-null-bend-null-rip and that should allow me free association to drop a bend relief attribute onto those vertices. Would that work?
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Answered my own question. Self intersection and non-manifold results. Sheet edge extension / retraction operations it is then.
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Yeah - the c++ side will not be happy with a 2-sided edge in definition surface not annotated as a joint.
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That's alright I can work around it. I'm sure this won't be the last time c++ is unhappy with me but c++ gave me enough trouble in undergrad so I think it's fair to return the favor.
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@lana follow up question along the same lines explored here: how does the C++ side of the engine feel about single sided edges labeled as a rip, or multiple single side edges labeled as the same rip but spaced apart? Application would be more advanced joint styles not currently offered by the sheet metal update function, like half overlap joints on edges of boxes.
I've been reading a lot of patent drawings recently that are a little outside the usual fare for sheet metal parts but the drawings are pretty enough that I want to turn em into features for other people to play with.
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