Flattening Sheet Metal Solidworks With Cuts

To flatten the entire part if the flat pattern1 feature is present unsuppress flat pattern1 or click flatten on the sheet metal toolbar.

Flattening sheet metal solidworks with cuts.

In either the featuremanager design tree or the cut list right click the flat pattern feature for the part and click unsuppress. To hide the bend lines expand flat pattern1 right click bend lines and select hide. In the cut list right click the body and click flatten. These improvements also provide better flattened geometry for certain corner treatments lofted bends and in some cases where cuts intersect bend regions.

Patrick you can t flatten surface in anything but the the latest versions of solidworks even then there is no feature to re form them. To flatten a body do one. The bend lines are shown by default when you unsuppress flat pattern1. With the normal cut tool you can normalize all non normal side walls in sheet metal models.

You can select several faces to define a normal sheet metal side wall not top or bottom faces. In addition a cut list contains a separate representation for each body with a flat pattern specific to the body. Multibody sheet metal cut lists offer the same features as weldment cut lists including the ability to automatically organize and update sheet metal bodies and view sheet metal properties. The normal cut tool applies a normal cut feature that is independent from the tools that removed the material.

Improvements to flattening sheet metal parts make flattening succeed for complex shapes which previously failed.