Solidworks Sheet Metal Drawing No Flat Pattern

Solidworks has a great feature if you right click on any flat surface and select export to dxf dwg you can save the flat pattern to be imported into cam nesting software for cnc cutting.

Solidworks sheet metal drawing no flat pattern. All features after flat pattern1 appear only in the flattened sheet metal part. Improvements to flattening sheet metal parts make flattening succeed for complex shapes which. The recommended way to enter the flat pattern view is by the flatten command on the sheet metal tab on the command manager. As shown in the figure below the flat pattern view is the same as the front view and shows the part in a bent state.

When i create the drawing and want to pull in the flat pattern view it comes in folded. Set the active configuration to defaultsm flat pattern. This toggles the visibility of sketches and if it is off the bend lines sketch will be hidden. I want to pull the flat pattern of a sheet metal part into my drawing.

In a sheet metal part create a new configuration. This is added automatically when you create a drawing of a sheet metal part and can help identify the problem. In the featuremanager design tree do one of the following. The part flattens fine in the model when selecting the flat pattern icon.

The first method i tried was to go to view sketches. I ve done this hundreds of times without issue. From here navigate to the configurations tab and check the derived configuration default sm flat pattern. All features before flat pattern1 in the featuremanager design tree appear in both the folded and flattened sheet metal part.

The flat pattern1 feature is intended to be the last feature in the folded sheet metal part. As you can see the view is still set to the flat pattern orientation in the drawing view propertymanager but the drawing view is no longer flattened. Right click flat pattern and select unsuppress. Click the flatten button in the sheet metal toolbar so that the part bends back up.

When the flat pattern drawing view of a solidworks sheet metal part displays the part in the bent condition this can indicate an issue with the suppression state of the flat pattern feature. Displaying solidworks bend lines. I ve shown a relatively simple part above just tell that to the laser cutting machine operator just a bent plate with some mounting holes and cut out text that reads solidworks. Sheet metal part often times we create sheet metal works of art or just really complex designs and we want the design to be clearly shown on the drawing.

David ben this is correct behavior with multi bodies sheet metal part as solidworks can not show both flat pattern at same time hence one need to use model view and select the required body to insert the flat pattern view for that body. It is also shown folded in the view palette which is not normal. Click edit suppress this configuration to suppress all of the selected features. Switch back to the drawing.

Select process bends and all of the features after it.