I am trying to create a form tool for the attached part, this is a real part that does exist.
I'm not attempting to add all the extra holes and cuts in the tool, I can do that later in another process.
I can build the form tool with a couple sketches (you can unsuppress the tool to see what I did) but when I try to form a piece of sheet metal with it I get the "The part's thickness may not be compatible with this form tool. The thickness must be less than the minimum radius of curvature for the form tool. " error.
I suspect this may be due to the fact that the starting face and ending face are not co-planar, because I built a very similar form tool in which those faces were co-planar and it worked fine.
So my next idea was rather than start by lofting a solid, use the sketches to create a lofted surface, then just extend the surface past where I need to go and cut the resulting part after. That didn't work either because of geometry of the two sketches and them being offset in more than one axis, it created intersected and twisted surfaces when I tried to extend them.
I've been fooling around with this thing for a couple days and still don't have it right.
Can anyone offer any ideas for another approach?
Thanks
I think to coax SW to do this may require more than just a single forming tool. You may not be able to get SW to replicate the real world process for this part, or you may have to ignore some real world limitations to get SW to do it. Such as, you might be able to get it to work by ignoring the undercut or the direction of the forming tool. You may also have to create a flange around the part that has part of the flat face on it.
Is your goal to make it work in SW sheet metal or to make it work in a real world process?
I would guess that the error is due to some of the non-tangent edges on the part. You might have to delete or rip these areas to get a forming tool to work.