Exploring Sheetmetal Tools

SolidWorks is a pretty flexible collection of tools that lends itself for exploration. Just because there is are tools called sheetmetal, doesn't mean it's just for sheetmetal parts. If you think of sheetmetal instead as constant thickness parts with folds, you could consider other applications of constant thickness materials.

Sample Applications:

It may not be the ideal tool for this, but in a pinch it allows you to learn engineering with thin, flexible materials. Here is a half-day playing around with some of the tools. If you have a wide enough screen, redisplay this page with full size images by clicking here. To redisplay with the small images click here.

1. Number 10 Envelope

Start with a flat rectangle and add a few tabs. Bend the tabs over to create an envelope. You have to be careful about what happens in the corners.

2. Drink Holder Cardboard Display

Straight piece of cardboard folded over a couple of times. This would need some gluing. Do a few extrusions, but limit the extrusion distance of the feature.

3. Archive Box

This one has a lot of folds on top of each other. The edge radii are a bit of fun, but the flat pattern looks like it turned out o.k.

4. Display Box

Of course you can create an assembly of sheetmetal parts. Here we use three sample thin cardboard pieces to build up a triangular display box.

5. Messenger Bag

Besides paper you could also consider fabrics, where concepts like hemming are standard language. Here is a quick model of a messenger bag, a lot more square than it would exist in reality. Add buckles, straps, reinforcement patches as needed to build the assembly. The advantage of doing this as a sheetmetal part, is that you get a flat pattern. You can look at the flat pattern to make sure you have enough material to cut the part. In this case there is an overlap, so this would need to be cleaned up.