Design for Manufacturing (DFM)

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Capabilities
• Scope of accepted geometries
• API overview
• Limitations

Sheet metal product designs start with CAD files and in order to get the manufacturable sheet metal parts. Those CAD files should follow specific sheet metal design guidelines. Using a Design for Manufacturing (DFM) strategy decreases possible issues in sheet metal design from the beginning, saving both time and money.

Overview

The DFM analysis for Sheet Metal can be run on a CAD file in order to find any possible design issues, e.g. small distance between holes, inconsistent bend radii, etc. As a result of the analysis, features of the part that don't meet the DFM check criteria will be found.

As the API changes to accommodate the needs of users compatibility will be preserved as much as possible but is ultimately not guaranteed.

Capabilities

The DFM analysis can reveal various possible design issues in a sheet metal part, the full list of them is listed here.

Below is a simple example of DFM analysis.

3D model	Issues
	3x Irregular Depth Extruded Hole 1x Large Depth Bead 1x Non Standard Sheet Size 1x Non Standard Sheet Thickness 3x Small Distance Between Extruded Hole And Edge 8x Small Distance Between Hole And Edge

• DFM issues in Sheet Metal

Scope of accepted geometries

The DFM analysis can be done on B-Rep representations, namely it works with ModelData::Shell or ModelData::Solid .

API overview

DFMSheetMetal_Analyzer is the class that performs sheet metal DFM analysis. It has parameters that allow to modify rules for analysis. There are 2 ways to perform DFM analysis:

• Using DFMSheetMetal_Analyzer on a given shape. Sheet Metal DFM Analyzer Example demonstrates this approach.
• Using SheetMetal_Data as an input parameter. In this case, one will need to get the sheet metal data before running DFMSheetMetal_Analyzer. It's useful approach that helps to save computation time if sheet metal tools already used in code. Below is an example of how the sheet metal dfm analysis tool can be used with this approach:

  SheetMetal_Data aData = /* Get data using sheet metal tools (e.g. SheetMetal_Analyzer)*/;
  DFMSheetMetal_Analyzer anAnalyzer;
  MTKBase_FeatureList anIssues = anAnalyzer.Perform (aData);
  /* Process issues */

Limitations

DFMSheetMetal_Analyzer is sensitive to the models' thickness. In order to get acceptable results, use a model with constant thickness. Otherwise, results can be inaccurate.