Building the Foundation of the Design - Autodesk Inventor 2010: No Experience Required - page 73

Inventor's Sheet Metal Tools
Producing a sheet metal component must be done with an understanding of the
limitations of the production methods available and the materials that a com-
pany typically uses.
Most people build sheet metal parts from readily available sheets that have
predefi ned thickness and material properties. Based on the tooling, you can
even predict how the material will stretch as it's processed. For years, engineers
and designers have developed tables that they use to calculate what shape and
size they need to cut into the sheet to be able to bend the part into the proper
fi nished size. Now they can let the computer do the work for them by creating
their parts using Inventor.
Sheet Metal Defaults
Sheet metal defaults are essentially styles in the vein of the layer styles or dimen-
sion styles you'll learn about later in this topic. They're meant to be established
within the templates and standards used in the part. A sheet metal rule is a name
given to a set of properties for the sheet metal that will be used for a part. It con-
sists of three elements: a thickness, a material, and an unfolding method. You
defi ne a style through the Sheet Metal Defaults and Style and Standard Editor
dialog boxes. After a sheet metal default is defi ned, it can be shared through the
style libraries.
The Sheet Metal Defaults Dialog Box
The Sheet Metal Defaults dialog box (Figure 2.21) works a little differently than
most dialog boxes in Inventor. Instead of being the source of the feature that
will be created, or the place where edits are performed, it's a front-end for either
selecting what rules will be applied to your new component or overriding the
Thickness, Material, or Unfold value of the rules you've already created. It lets
you defi ne a new set of conditions unique to the current Part fi le.