Building the Foundation of the Design - Autodesk Inventor 2010: No Experience Required - page 83

Congratulations — you've made your fi rst 3D feature in Autodesk Inventor. I
know it took a while, but the things you've learned up to this point will be very
important going forward are the foundation of everything else. But wasn't it easy
to make this? Now you'll do something more complex, but it will be easy too.
Next, you'll use the Flange tool, which is one of the most commonly used
sheet metal tools. Let's take a moment to get familiar with its dialog box so that
you can recognize the functions of some of the buttons that commonly appear
in the sheet metal tools.
The Flange Tool
After you create a base feature in sheet metal, chances are you'll use the Flange
tool next. Figure 2.28 shows its dialog box.
FIGURE 2.28 The Flange dialog box
A fl ange is a placed feature with a lot of options. The Flange tool and the
Face tool have the same tabs that allow individual override, so we'll focus on
the Shape tab.
The Shape Tab
You place a fl ange by selecting an edge to which you want to add a bend and
adjacent face. The upper-left portion of the Shape tab (Figure 2.28) is where you
select those edges. The Edges list displays the number of edges that have been
selected.