Sheet Metal - What feature to fill in opening with flange or tab?

[KB1]

Hi, 

I'm trying to model a PSM part. It is supposed to be a "double-pitched" basin (see image with the 4 different lengths of vertical corners shown in a 3D Sketch).

What feature should I be able to use to connect all 4 sides into a "bottom" for this part?

I've successfully created a tab on the strange plane, but then creating the side flanges was difficult to work out due to all the strange angles. Now I've taken a different approach, of creating a tab on the Top Plane, hoping to work down to the bottom of the pan and "fill" it in. 

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[hawcad]

Hi @KB1

I suppose the best way here would be to use the "Convert from Solid to Sheetmetal"

I will create a small example within the next minutes

[hawcad]

Hi @KB1

and here is the promised video what I would suggest for modelling this part.

Sorry for not being able to upload it directly to the psot.

Seems that the forum interface at the moment is a little bit overloaded

[Johnson_BigMatt]

@hawcad's example is a great use of the convert from solid...

another approch might have been to simply create a "Bounded Surface" for the bottom and then simply "Thicken" it.??

[SeanCresswell]

@hawcad,

Nice one buddy!....when I read this post on my phone this morning, that is exactly the process that came to mind.

I'd have communicated a similar video, if you hadn't. But your video looks way better anyway.

[hawcad]

Hi @SeanCresswell

thanks for those nice words.

They encouraging me to be active member to this forum/community.

I just searched what time there is at the moment in Newzealand, and have seen, that we are 12 hours differently from each other.

So we have a good chance to be online all over the day for communicationg and answering questions here.

Keep active and thanks for all You are doing here too.

[KB1]

Cool video, thanks for making it! 

I will give that a try.

Just to be clear, there's no way to do this in Ordered, using a sheet metal feature to merge flanges or something? 

Thank you again.

[hawcad]

Hi @KB1

just to be clear - this ONLY can be done in ORDERED!

I only created the body in sync, since I think this is easier for me and more flexible when changing it.

But this is on YOu how and where You will create the body feature for converting to sheet metal.

[12GAGE]

Two rail path and profile  might be the right way to get started.

Or your "work your way down" starting with sheet metal would be my approach from scratch if you were confident the design would not need to be edited later.

If you had 8 vertical planes and 1 ground plane and 1  sloped plain to start the design, then it would be easier to "dial-in" or fine tune later when anybody comes back and states: we need another 1/8" in this corner. With that method, all of the tab sketches would be includes from the planes and the flanges would replace some edges with included lines from the planes. This is how I work most of the time because the shop or client comes back very often asking for a minor edit to make things fit up better.

[KB1]

I was trying to do something like that (I think). But as a long-time SolidWorks user, many of the feature dialogs in ST8 make no sense to me. I tried to loft flanges across the opening to make the pan close, but couldn't figure it out.

How would the "two rail path & profile" work? How would you do it?