Grain Direction - CADshift Docs

Brushed and grained sheet has a direction, and a part cut across the grain when it should have been cut along it is scrap. Mark Grain Direction records that direction on the part itself, so the DXF you hand the laser carries it.

It is available at every tier, including Free.

Quick Start

Open a sheet metal part.
Go to the Sheet Metal tab. CADshift’s panel sits beside Inventor’s own Define A-Side.
Select one straight edge on a flat face, running along the sheet’s rolling direction.
Click Mark Grain Direction.

The edge lights up in the accent colour for the session.

What the mark does

CADshift stores the mark as an attribute set on that edge inside the .ipt, so it survives a reopen and travels with the file to whoever opens it next.

On export it does two things:

puts a grain arrow on the profile’s GRAIN layer in the DXF — at every tier, so a Basic seat still gets the direction into the file and can act on it
when the profile’s “Align the grain direction with the X axis” rule is on, rotates the flat pattern so the grain runs along X. That rule lives in Placement & Orientation and is Professional — marking an edge you cannot export would be no use, so the mark and the arrow are free and only the automatic turning is paid for.
Marking the edge, then exporting the same part three ways to compare the rules.

Marking again replaces that body’s mark. On a multi-body part, other bodies keep theirs.

Clear Grain Direction removes every mark in the part.

The mark is written in a single undoable transaction called “Mark grain direction”, so Ctrl+Z puts it back the way it was.

Limits

Rule	Why
Sheet metal parts only	The Sheet Metal tab is the gate; a plate has no rolling direction to record
Exactly one edge	The mark is a direction, not a region
The edge must be a straight line	A curve has no single direction
The edge must not touch a bend	The tangent edge between a flat face and a bend cylinder disappears when the part flattens, so the arrow could never be placed

A-Side is Inventor’s job, not ours

Inventor already ships Define A-Side, and CADshift does not duplicate it.

What CADshift does is read the result. If you have defined an A-Side, the profile’s flat-pattern flip rule stands down and leaves your orientation alone. Deliberate beats automatic.

There is no CADshift A-Face command, and there should not be one.

Advanced

The attribute-set name defaults to CadShiftGrainDirection.

Renaming the attribute set orphans existing marks

If you change the attribute-set name, parts marked under the old name stop being recognised at export and new marks are written under the new name. Only change it if you know why you are doing it, and change it once.