Some people aks a question regarding how to model a fan housing for a centrifugal fan where the central section need to have hems formed over the circular form of the housing... I see several people saying it was impossible to do with Solidworks.... well....

Attached is a zip file (compressed with WinRAR to Zip format) containing a sample of the Fan Housing with the central part modeled as Sheet metal including the hems.

Open the assembly you will see the entire Fan Housing including central section and side covers, you will see that the central section have the following Configurations:

01 - With Side Hems Formed
- Derived Configuration >>> SM-FLAT-PATTERN
02- Fully Formed Part

If you select the first configuration you can see the flat part with hems, the derived configuration will show the flat pattern and the last configuration will show the fully formed part (rolled after forming the hems).

As you will se to do this part is tricky, but you do not need any "special software", There are only a few things that SolidWorks can not do (if you know how to use it), another issue are the bugs... for some reasons when I change the dimensions of the model (by editing dimensions of the the two skeleton sketches placed at the assembly level) the ecuations change the name of the assembly to the file name of one of my files (realy weird, since I do nto work with that particular assembly in over six months), maybe this do not happen to you... I believe is someting on the templates...

The zip file also includes a copy of the forming tool I used to form the air inlet on the side cover of the housing.

Have fun!