Lofted Bend

A SOLIDWORKS forum question asked this week: how do you model a curved sheet metal part, and do stamping structures require forming tools? The answer depends entirely on what “curved” means, because SOLIDWORKS handles three fundamentally different curved-sheet-metal scenarios with three different tools — and forming tools are a separate concern from the geometry of the base body. This post maps the decision tree. The Three Curved Sheet Metal Scenarios SOLIDWORKS sheet metal works by tracking a flat-pattern state for every feature. Every bend is stored with a radius, K-factor, and bend allowance so the flat pattern can be computed by unfolding. Curved geometry complicates this in three distinct ways: ...

The Lofted Bend PropertyManager has a Manufacturing Method dropdown with two options: Bent and Formed. When the dropdown shows only Formed — or you select Bent and get a flat pattern with no bend lines — the root cause is almost always one of three things: sketch planes that aren’t parallel, profile geometry that has sharp corners, or connector points placed on the wrong part of the sketch entities. None of these are obvious from the error message, and the official documentation buries the parallel-plane requirement. Here’s what’s actually going on. ...