- [Instructor] In this video, I wanna be showing you
how to create a feature that cuts across a bend,
and we can create a tab or something like this.
So here's my example, part of what we're gonna be creating
in this video, let's actually close this one down,
and here's my initial state.
So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna create a cut
across this bend here.
So let's go ahead and start a sketch on the box.
Click over here, let's start a sketch,
and I'm gonna create a rectangle.
Let's go ahead and snap that rectangle
to the start of the bend and to the end of the part.
Now a quick and easy way to do this
is using a center line I can snap to that origin
and then snap it to the mid point of that
and go ahead and make that horizontal
and go ahead and just define the width.
So I'm gonna type in 1.5,
actually let's go a little bit bigger, let's go two inches,
2.0 there it is.
Let's go ahead and do a feature extruded cut,
and we wanna make sure we're cutting
completely across this bend.
So we can do that a couple of different ways.
The first way is instead of the line,
we can say up to vertex
and choose maybe like this point over here,
so it'll automatically cut all the way through that bend.
But you might wanna cut a little bit further.
So you probably wanna go back over here
to the blind command,
and just make sure that the value we're putting in there
is greater than the amount of bend we have here.
So let's go ahead and just kind of drag that up
or actually turn link to thickness off,
and then go ahead and type this in,
or make that value here.
So right here, let's say this is gonna be 1.5.
There's our cut, turn link to thickness off,
and then click on okay.
Alright, so there is our cut completely across that bend,
and now we wanna add a tab,
so we can go back down to the bottom of the part,
start a sketch, and once we're on the bottom,
sketch here, let's go ahead and create a rectangle.
Let's snap it to that inside edge,
and I'm gonna use that same technique using that center line
and let's go ahead and snap it to the mid point,
make that horizontal, and then we can also add
something like a hole or some advanced same feature,
so let's go out here and create another center line
with that hole right in that.
So now we have this fully defined,
not fully defined yet but we're getting that way,
so let's go ahead and create a distance from the edge.
Let's type in 0.1,
and over here,
let's get that to a one inch dimension.
And out here, let's say this is gonna be 2.0.
Alright, looks pretty good,
let's give a dimension here of the size of the hole, 0.75.
Alright, there's my tab, it looks pretty good.
Let's go ahead to create that tab.
Let's go to sheet metal, click on base flange tab,
and click on okay, alright.
Looks great.
Now, the only issue though is sometimes
when you're creating sheet metal,
SolidWorks makes it look so easy,
it makes it look great on the screen,
but when you actually go to unfold this,
you can run into some issues.
Let's click on flatten and notice over here
that the tab actually interferes with the material
that's trying to be cut out,
so obviously in the real world, this is not gonna work.
So you have to keep in mind how big is the tab,
how big is the cut that you're gonna be
cutting that tab out.
So let's go back and see if we can fix this up.
So either we can make this a little bit longer,
or create this flange longer,
or we can shorten the tab.
Let's go ahead and just shorten the tab.
Let's go back over to the sketch itself,
and let's go ahead and modify that.
So let's make this 1.5,
and let's make this hole a little bit smaller,
half of an inch, and that should probably work.
Alright, so now you can see in the flattened state,
we have material that goes all the way around the tab
so we're able to cut this out and it looks pretty good.
So we go back and fold that back up
and you can see that's how it works.
So generally when we wanna have enough material
around where that feature is gonna be cut out of
so that it can easily be formed and cut
without too much interference.
A general rule of thumb is you generally wanna have
at least one material thickness of a gap
around where your tab will be cut out of that flange.
So in this case it looks pretty good
and that is how you cut across a bend
and add a tab into a sheet metal part in SolidWorks.