Sheet Metal Parts and Features

You can create sheet metal parts in one of the following ways:

• Sheetmetal Mode—Using a specialized sheet metal environment

• Assembly Mode—Using a top-down approach.

• Conversion—Converting from a solid part.

Sheet metal parts are solid models that can be represented in either sheet metal form or as a flat model. These parts are of uniform thickness and can be modified by adding features. Features include walls, cuts, rips, bends, unbends, bend backs, forms, notches, punches, and relief. You can also create solid features, including chamfers, holes, rounds, and solid cuts, and apply patterns, copy, and mirror operations. You can also get information about the part, calculate its mass, and analyze the engineering.

Sheet metal parts have both driving and offset surfaces. The side (depth) surfaces are formed only after the model is successfully regenerated. The driving side is highlighted in green by default and the offset side is white, indicating thickness. When placing a feature, best practice is to select flat surfaces as references. When no flat surface is available, use an edge.

Suppressing and Resuming Sheet Metal Features

You can suppress sheet metal features to temporarily remove them. Suppressing features simplifies your design and reduces regeneration time. While working on a complex sheet metal assembly, you can suppress some of the features and components that are not essential to the current assembly process.