In my company we do not have press breaks so we do all our sheet metal bending by hand or farm out larger parts.

Most of what we make is done with 6061 aluminum.

We also need need to make tight bends due to the products we build.

To make these tight bends work without crazing or breaking the material (and to make the bending easier) we make relief cuts.

See attached drawing and picture.

I have not found a way to do this in SW without making the layout using a material thickness equal to the amount of material left after the relief cut and then adding another layer of sheet metal on top of the areas that do not have the relief cut.

In the drawing attached, this means that I would actually have to specify the material thickness as .035" and do all my layouts and bends.

Then I would have to come back and draw a sketch on top of the sheet metal where there is not a relief cut and add another thickness of sheet metal.

The drawing attached actually has a double relief cut so I would have to add .01 thickness and then do another sketch on top of that layer and add another .045 layer of material.

I would have to do this for every surface where there is no relief cut.

I have tried to do a cut extrude but it will not allow me to do a bend at the bottom of that cut.

If I try to use the full thickness of the material (.090) then the bend point and related dimensions will not come out correctly because it is bending .09 of material not .035 that I really have remaining after the relief cut.

I have also tried a sketched bend after the relief cut (placing the bend line on the surface after the cut) but Sketched Bend does not work in an extruded area (in line with the extrude).  It will only allow doing a bend across an extruded cut, not in line with it.

Any suggestions?