Creating complex Fusion 360 sheet metal designs in traditional CAD can be accomplished with a myriad of feature options. Face, Flange and Bend being some of the traditional options you would see in any 3D CAD package. This is certainly true for Autodesk Inventor.
Autodesk introduced Fusion 360 sheet metal capabilities and the when you look the options you will definitely take a step back and think “WHAT?”
The only option you have will be the flange command. No Face, no bend just flange. Now how do we create sheet metal with only 1 command?
Fusion 360, even though it has just the Flange command is able to intuitively create the components you need by analysing what you have already created and creating your sheet metal part accordingly. If you have drawn a 2D shape and with the flange command you select the profile, it will create that face feature for you.
It is very similar to the extrude command, all Fusion 360 is doing is taking the sheet metal rule value that you specified and giving the profile that thickness. You want to create a flange? By selecting the edge of that face you created, Fusion 360 realises that you want to bend up and at an angle, so it does it’s thing.
The options are now slightly different as you are now able to give length of the flange as well as an angle. The way that the two flanges combine or miter is also an option that is available.
The is all good and well but what if I want to do a lofted flange for ducting purposes? Don’t worry about that. Fusion 360 caters for this option as they have recently added the lofted flange feature exactly for that purpose. It is all just under your flange option
In conclusion, Fusion 360 has really simplified the way to process the sheet metal workflow making the software more intuitive and taking a lot of the thinking for you of which feature should be utilised out of the process.
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