Sheet Metal Animation

[cats252]

Hi all.

I want to animate a sheet metal part unfolding/folding. Does anyone know how to do this? I would really appreciate some help.

Thanks in advance, cats252.

[ttraser]

I've done this by making an assembly of the folding pieces, pieces that are mated where they bend on the edge. It worked great for a manufacturing aid as to which bend to bend first, second, etc.

[cats252]

Thanks for the suggestion!

I would prefer to be able to animate a sheet metal part/assembly so if anyone knows how please let me know.

cats252

I have no idea, although I agree this would be cool

Animator will fly around parts/assy, change their view states, and explode them (move them) but it won't change the geometry.

I've animated a spring compressing by using VB by changing the length of a helix which caused the spring to collapse. I had it setup so I could hit the space bar and it would change the spring a little bit. Hitting the space bar multiple times made it look like the spring was collapsing.

The good news is that animator can be setup to capture the screen when it updates. So activating animator screen capture and a vb that changed the spring height, I produced an animation of a spring collapsing.

The best way to get started in vb is to create a macro, then change a sheet metal bend angle. This will produce a snippit of source code. Once you have this you can create 'for' loops that fold each angle in your model. After you do this, you can create an animation of a sheet metal part folding up.

If you like to program, you could write a routine that query's all the bend angles, sorts them properly and then plays the sequence for the bends.

To write a VB program to animate a sheet metal part would less than an hour. To make it more universal would take a little longer.