Help on generating 3D Sink drawings?

[David Bethel]

Nick,

I will have to look into it Inventor more throughly. It has sounded like the most interesting ( to me anyway ) of all of these new fandangled apps. -David

[Mr T]

It is amazing, especially sheet metal flat patterns, the live renderings and the step back/reverse engineer parts and assemblies.

Nick

[StykFacE]

It is amazing, especially sheet metal flat patterns, the live renderings and the step back/reverse engineer parts and assemblies.

Nick

flat patterns from a 3D model is great using Inventor, however in real world situations it isn't correct. we cut LOTS of flat patterns at work, and using Inventer to automate the flat patterns is the quickest way to get things screwed up lol.

when you calculate in bending allowances and stresses and so forth using different metals, Inventor gets close but not dead-on accurate. when you're dealing with the hundered thousanths you lose a lot of room for error. we have to maually do the calculating ourselves in AutoCAD, which sux cuz it would be nice to have something as easy as Inventor to do that stuff ;-)

[Mr T]

Fair enough but surely you can add a factor into the bend values etc if you no it's wrong by a factor ?

Nick

[StykFacE]

Fair enough but surely you can add a factor into the bend values etc if you no it's wrong by a factor ?

Nick

maybe so.... i'm good in AutoCAD, not Inventor.... i guess i'm just talking about defaults. in fact, do you know where i could do that... if possible? i guess i never thought of searching that....

[Mr_Adams78]

We work with sheet metal parts exclusively at my current job. We are attempting to inject Inventor into our manufacturing process.

-As far as creating the allowances for the flat patterns to be accurate, you have to get all of the options in the sheet metal styles set up correctly, including bend tables that match your tooling. The biggest difference between the ACAD flats and the Inventor flats, is that generally people do the ACAD flats with nominal measurements making the dimensions in the flat patterns nice whole numbers, Inventor works with actual measurements so the dimensions on the flat patterns are not nice whole numbers. You can chase this between the model and the flat pattern, either the model has odd dimensions with the flats showing whole, or vice versa the model with good whole dimesnions and the flats with the odd sizes.

A major problem we are having right now is the sink problem. In my attempts I have found about 3 different ways to model a S/S sink, but nothing I can generate an accurate flat pattern off of. Inventor has a real problem placing a "fold" over another fold at 90 degrees, i.e. at the bottom filleted corner.

Inventor constantly gives me messages about the unmanufacturablilty of the part I am trying to create, but I have sat with the guy at the break who is taking the ACAD flat pattern cutout, and folding it right up into a perfect sink.

In short, how do you create an accurate sheet metal sink flat pattern.
Open to any and all suggestions..

[Lazer]

Im learning the sheet metal feature at collage myself so I only know the basics, can you show a photo of the s/s sink you want to model as there is huge collection of sinks on the market.

[Mr T]

Is there a seam in the sink ? If not I can't see how IV can flat pattern it.

There is an Add-in for a few thousand dollars that is very accurate for sheet metal.

Nick

[Mr_Adams78]

The sink does have a seam, one on each corner, the flat pattern is really pretty basic. The problem deals with the 3/4" fillet/bend on the bottom of the sink intersecting with the 3/4"fillet/bend on each corner of the sink.

I have an ACAD version of the flat pattern for this sink & an Inventor model which shows were I am having trouble, but I'm not sure how to include those images with this post?? I can only post an image if it already exists on the web??

Can I send the images to your e-mail, Mt. T & Deelay, or anybody else??

Thanks,

Adams[/img]

[Lazer]

Follow this tutorial to post your picture.http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=183