Sheet Metal features in SOLIDWORKS have always been user-friendly. They’ve always been consistent. Also, whenever there is an enhancement to the core Sheet Metal Features, it’s always something useful.
Materials in Sheet Metal are extremely important. If you are choosing between building a part out of Aluminum or Stainless Steel – you aren’t just choosing a material. You’re choosing tooling, bend radius values, and a plethora of other design requirements that are unique to your company. SOLIDWORKS now allows you to link typical Sheet Metal Parameters to any custom material, so you can use those parameters again and again.
To link a parameter to a Custom Material to a Sheet Metal part, all you have to do is edit that Material – and expand to the Sheet Metal tab.
When you assign a custom material to a sheet metal part, you can link the sheet metal parameters to the material. If you change the material, the sheet metal parameters also update.
To link materials and sheet metal parameters:
1. Open a sheet metal part.
2. In the Feature Manager design tree, right-click Material and click Edit Material.
3. In the dialog box:
a) Right-click Custom Materials and click New Category.
b) Right-click New Category and click New Material.
c) Set the custom material properties on each tab as required.
d) Click the Sheet Metal tab.
Options on this tab are available for custom materials only.
e) Select Thickness Range.
f) Click Add twice.
g) For each row in the table, set the following:
Thickness ranges must be continuous; there cannot be a gap in the range. For example, you cannot define a range from 0 to 3 and define the next range from 4 to 6 because the range between 3 and 4 is not covered.
h) Click Apply and Close.
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