Hello All,

This is my first post to this forum.  I have been a solidworks user for a very long time, but never had the need to do too many sheet metal parts so my skills are a bit low in sheet metal.  I am building a homebuilt airplane from plans and I want to draw up my wing ribs in Solidworks and have the blanks waterjet or laser cut.  I imported the airfoil by entering the coordinates as a curve through points.  I then added the flange and when I unfold it, I get an odd relief that is shown near the trailing edge.  Also the ribs are divided by the spars so I need to make seperate flat patterns for the nose ribs, center ribs, rear ribs and aileron ribs.  When I divide them and make the flat patterns I am still getting the odd relief shown in the file.  Is there a way to lay out the flange so this does not happen?  Would having a cutout relief like a small circular cutout already in place work better.  For the flanged lightening holes I plan to use a custom form tool.

The file is in SW2010.  We use both 2010 and 2012 at work and plan to upgrade to 2013 soon.  Would it work any better in a newer version?

Moving forward I may wont to brush up on my sheet metal skills.  Any books or tutorials people that people can recomend?  Solidwize.com has some but it subscription based?  An added pluss would be tutorials or a class that caters to airplane construction.  Construction is, all aluminum wing and 4130 tube and fabric fuselage and tail feathers.

Best regards,

Marc