Dave King wrote:

Hi Monty (et al)

The nice thing about the SE sheet metal package is that it will develop the
flat patterns for you, taking into account the bending losses. I'm not so
sure how it would do with something complex like a rib with a curve in the
bend. It might work, might not.

The only people who would come right out and say yes it would is Catia.
The problem is I think they want you to buy a special module to do this.

package which I use called Rhino that is much more affordable and easy to
use. It is a one time price, and there are no maintenance fees. Plus there

I already have Rhino V1. I've used it to model quite a few things, and am still
working out how to do others. I used to do stuff with 3D Studio V4 Dos and
wish I could find something that was setup the same for windoze. Between
Acad and 3D studio it was fairly easy to crank out models. Rhino seems
to have one of the more compatible with how 3D did things. 3D max seems
to take about 5 times the amount of steps to do the same thing and really
is annoying for working from vertex level stuff.

My advice to you would be to

calculate the bending losses manually and use Rhino to design your parts. I
think that Paul posted a spreadsheet for calculating the bending stuff a
while back.

With the headaches the Solid edge demo has been giving me I might as well
go back to the way I did things. Acad for drawings and exporting a dxf into
rhino
to model something. I was looking at SE etc for the company but if it can't
do the
basics its not worth a damn to us. That was the one thing I thought was
slick about
the sheet metal portion of SE was being able to setup bend, lay backs etc
for any material
and have them all calc'd out for me.

Quick question for you about Rhino is there a direct way to extrude a wing
from an
airfoil section with a taper and twist?

Thanks

Dave

The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the
friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes

 
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