bend up or down?

There is really no room for intepretation here - it is based on the sheetmetal feature from the 3D part before it was unfolded. If you use the unfold with bend line annotations, it absolutely explicited. I think it's also based on the view that you laid out. Of course if you flip the view around 180, the bend lines will be down verse up. Are you using the automatic bend line annotations?

Mark

You do realize, don't you, that you ca flip the flat pattern, as far as bend up/down.

WT

Thanks, I realized shortly after posting that I could flip the view and it would change the bend up or down. In your experience has the solidworks annotations ever steered you wrong as far as bending up or down. I just tend to get worried with some of these complex sheetmetal parts, and I am probably over analizing them at times. I try to use base flange as much as I can instead of sketched bends. thanks for the feedback.

I have never seen it be wrong. When you think about things in SW, that's probably one of the most stable in that it knows which way a flange goes.

WT

Stew and Wayne, the only time I've seen this to be wrong was once, in SW07, on a mirror part that had the sheet metal feature added. After discovering the error in the shop, I reopened the print to correct it and did a Ctrl-Q rebuild, and then the pattern notes corrected themselves. For some reason that view didn't rebuild before we printed. The view property references and everything else were correct, and as a rule I rebuild before printing.

I generally put the part side up with the first flange that will be bent in the up direction. The operator then is looking at the part in his hand, ready for the first bend. This helps eliminate forming parts backward. This also forces me to review the flat view before finishing the print.

regards, Diego

Interesting reasoning - I like it. This, of course, may get trumped by coated material, etc.

WT

We bend a lot of large parts and we dont really have a rule of thumb when designing them. I am trying to make it easier on our guys in the shop, we tend to have an issue with things getting bent backwards. I show an Iso view to clarify but it only sometimes further confuses. Dont even talk about some of the prints we delt woth that had 1st angle projection, that thru us for a loop. Any suggestions on what views you like to show on the drawings?

Regards, Stew

Adding a pictorial view has helped our shop understand prints, and having the flat pattern with the bend direction and dimensions to the bendlines has cut down on parts being bent backward. This year we will be moving toward only sending our own prints, not our customer prints, to the shop. We are currently primarily a job shop fabricator and our customer prints are so varied we think using only our own prints in the shop will help to reduce errors - people won't have to interpret each customers' prints. I plan to implement some level of reduced dimension or critical dimension prints for the shop, with the emphasis on manufacturing information.

Two other things we've done this past year have helped. We are now a paperless shop. Job routings are viewed on computers and the prints are linked to the routings. If I want to update a print for clarity or change a routing it's done immediately without having to find and replace paper print copies. I can use either a tif image of the print or an edrawing; most of the shop likes the edrawings because of the added viewing options. The other thing we did was hold several print reading classes. We had people from the shop and the office attend and this has helped; we emphasized the importance of reading the entire print, rather than just looking for the information for just the operation being worked on. That approach helps catch errors before more time and money is spent on an incorrect part, and people are getting better at inspecting their own setups.

regards, Diego