- [Narrator] There are two methods for
creating sheet metal parts.
The first and most obvious one is to create all
of the holes and features in the flattened state
and then go ahead and form that up
into your finished sheet metal part.
The second one is to form it first
and then add holes or features secondly.
But the problem with that is you have to do those
as machining operations and they're generally non-desirable.
So let me show you a couple
different options of how we can do that.
So the first thing I want to do is
choose this front face, start a sketch.
I'm gonna go ahead and look at this normal
and go ahead and look right here how we're gonna create
this sketch and let's go ahead an just snap to the ends.
Let's create a dimension here of 30 degrees.
Oop, not 60, 30.
There it is and let's go ahead and create a feature.
Extruded Cut.
So right here we have the option of this thing called
Normal Cut so I'm gonna go ahead and turn that off
for right now so we can see what's gonna happen.
I'm gonna click on Through All or Up To Next,
either one of those will work.
Okay, and click on OK.
And you get this really nice cut
that goes across the part and looks amazing.
The only problem is that in the real life if you're
trying to create a cut that looks exactly like this
with this kind of sharpened edge here
you'd have to do that as a secondary operation.
You generally don't have the ability to machine
a part like that in the flattened state,
it has to be machined afterwards.
So let's flatten this out and see how it looks.
Go over here to Sheet Metal, click on Flatten,
and you can see over here we've got some kind of
funky things going on because you see these sharpened
or flattened edges here aren't really gonna be
easy to create in a flattened state.
So that's generally what you don't want to do.
That's why you want to go back
and change that over to a Normal Cut.
So go over here to Cut Feature, or Cut Extrude number 1,
it is the feature and click on Normal Cut.
Right, and say optimize geometry, that'll help out.
Click on OK and now you can see what will happen.
Now if you look from the side it looks exactly the same.
But in reality these corners here actually
kind of dip in and they're deformed around those corners
so the end result is still that 30 degree angle cut
but you can create it out of flattened sheet metal.
So let's go ahead and flatten it one more time
and you can see here this is a lot easier to create
because it's been optimized for a
flat patterning type of operation.
Whether you're gonna laser cut it or blank it
or however you're gonna create that flat pattern,
this geometry here will automatically work.
And then when I flatten it back up you do get that
30 degree cut just like you're expecting
but you do have that material dipping in
because it is cut out of flat sheet material.
So there's a couple different
ways to make sheet metal parts.
The most optimal way is to always use that
Normal Cut option that way you don't
have to do any type of secondary operations.
Now if you really need something special
and you do need to do a secondary operation you can
but just keep in mind that it's gonna
add some time and cost to your part.