Sheet Metal Unfolding

For some purposes, it can be useful to unfold sheet metal part to get an original flat metal sheet which was used to produce that part, for example:

• compute the dimensions and perimeter of the original metal sheet;
• associate current shapes of the sheet metal part with the original flat metal sheet ones;
• transfer the result to CAD systems to design documentation and 2D geometry drawings.

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

Overview

The unfolding process can be run on a sheet metal part to get an unfolding of that part. As a result a SheetMetal_FlatPattern will be returned.

Capabilities

It is possible to unfold bends of various types (simple, curved and hem). Features produced by stamping inside the material (beads, louvers, bridges) will be ignored. Other features will remain in place.

Original 3d model

Unfolded view

Scope of accepted geometries

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

API overview

SheetMetal_Unfolder is the class that performs unfolding of sheet metal model.

To get an unfolding of sheet metal part, simply run SheetMetal_Unfolder.Perform() on a part, as shown below.

ModelData::Shell aShell = ...;
SheetMetal_Unfolder anUnfolder;
SheetMetal_FlatPattern aFlatPattern = anUnfolder.Perform (aShell);

A complete example of such workflow is available in the Sheet Metal Unfolder Example.