I have a sheet metal part that displays an incorrect flat pattern in the drawing (the bend notes indicate 'up' when they should be indicating 'down').
I have attached images of my problem; and I have also attached the part.
I have a sheet metal part that displays an incorrect flat pattern in the drawing (the bend notes indicate 'up' when they should be indicating 'down').
I have attached images of my problem; and I have also attached the part.
Totally strange, I have not seen this before. Make sure you send it in and let us know what they have to say.
WT
Hi Dean
I have opened your part and the flat pattern is correct to show "UP" in the bend notes in the drawing, I dont understand why you want them to show down as the part would be folded the wrong way, If you have the flat pattern cut out and placed on a bench you would need to fold the first fold so as the resulting lip would face up towards you then the next fold up towards you and then the final fold up towards you,
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply, but the drawing is incorrect to show "UP" as the bend direction. I realize a drawing should show the majority of the bends in the "UP" direction so it makes sense to the press brake operator, but the part is not symetrical at all. Have another look at my drawing and you will see that if you were to make all the bends in the "UP" direction as the flat pattern suggests, you would have the mirror image of the isometric. Definitely not a good thing, as it is a hard issue to catch when you have a lot of parts and no definitive dimensions to measure.
Also when the view is flipped such that the piece is oriented for insertion into a press, the bends should show as "Up", but switch to "Down".
Definitely a bug which should be submitted to your VAR.
I guess one thing I failed to note: I am running SW '11 SP2. Will update to 4.0 and report back.
I'm running SW2011-SP4 and see the same as you.
Hmmm, guess that rules that out. Somehow my VAR was able to produce this:
I was able to produce this:
Hi Dean
I am using 2011 with SP4 and get the same as your VAR, down loaded your part a second time to check and it is correct for me when I make a drawing with a flat pattern, It even changes to "down" when I flip the flat pattern so as it is in the same as your drawing, Everything works fine for me.
Dean, I got the same result as you on my machine.
We've had this happen to several of our parts as well. Our VAR gave us a way to correct parts with backwards bends, but there is no explanation or bug fix that we've been made aware of yet.
To fix the bend notes and have them remain parametric, edit the Flat-Pattern# feature and reselect the fixed face opposite of the one currently selected. After rebuilding, when you go back to the drawing the bend notes should reverse to the correct direction.
That's interesting - Thanks Sean. Good to know there is a work - around for this rather than manually switching bend notes. Any idea why the part seems to work for some people and not for others? There is really no consistency to this problem as far as I can tell.
I'm assuming the Solidworks team has been made aware of this problem? All of the parts affected are part of an onsite installation which makes for an extremely stressful day when you have a crew missing pieces to a large "puzzle", not to mention embarassing when you can't explain to anyone why you can't get a simple drawing right!
P.S. has this problem been present in other version of SW?
Where I work we make a lot of sheet matal parts and run into this problem from time to time. We use SW 2010 x64 with SP4. We haven't figured out any fix and pretty much do the same thing that Sean suggested.
My company also does a lot of work with sheetmetal, and this is a problem that a few of us have seen, though not often. I've come across a part where even switching the fixed face does not change the bend direction. The part should be bent "UP," but the bend notes read "DOWN." When I switch the fixed face the notes still read "DOWN," which would be correct except it has the wrong fixed face. Anyone else seen this?
Joe
Dean, I got the same result as you on my machine.
We've had this happen to several of our parts as well. Our VAR gave us a way to correct parts with backwards bends, but there is no explanation or bug fix that we've been made aware of yet.
To fix the bend notes and have them remain parametric, edit the Flat-Pattern# feature and reselect the fixed face opposite of the one currently selected. After rebuilding, when you go back to the drawing the bend notes should reverse to the correct direction.