Sheet Metal

The Sheet Metal tab holds the sheet metal features. Sheet metal bodies are listed in the Sheet Metal Bodies folder below Solid Bodies, with sheet metal icons.

Base Flange

A closed sketch (holes allowed) becomes a sheet of the given thickness. The bend radius and K-factor set here become the part's defaults.

Gauge tables

Base Flange, Sheet Metal Extrude and Transition / Reducer have a Gauge list: mild steel, steel gauges, stainless 304, and aluminium 5052 and 6061-T6. Picking a gauge sets the thickness, inside bend radius and K-factor. Save… keeps your own values as a gauge.

Sheet Metal Extrude

Extrudes an open sketch of lines and arcs into a sheet metal part. Arcs in the sketch are bends of their own radius; sharp corners get a bend of the inside radius set in the panel. Material goes on one side, the other side or both sides of the sketch; depth one way, reversed or mid-plane. A circle on its own is rolled into a cylinder, leaving a seam gap. Flanges, hems, Flatten and DXF export work on it.

Lofted Bend

A sheet metal part between two open profile sketches (each one chain of lines and arcs), for example a round-to-square transition, hopper or duct piece. Points are matched along both profiles by length, keeping every corner of either profile.

• Method: Bent makes flat facets folded along straight lines, each fold a bend line in the flat pattern and DXF; set the number of divisions. Formed makes a smooth sheet (rolled or pressed), with the set number of forming lines along the profiles.
• The flat pattern is developed at the neutral layer (K-factor) and works with Flatten, DXF export and flat pattern drawings. Material on the other side flips the thickness.
• A cut through a lofted bend is carried into its flat pattern, and the cut edges are square to the sheet, as a laser-cut blank formed to shape would be. This makes trimmed conical parts possible: loft the cone between two arcs, then cut it to the outline with a revolved cut.
• Edge flanges, corner reliefs and closed corners can't be added to a lofted bend; its shape comes from the profiles.

Transition / Reducer

Cones, concentric and eccentric reducers, square-, rectangle-, triangle-, pentagon- and hexagon-to-round transitions (either way up) and polygon frustums.

• Sizes, offset and rotation are set in the panel; sizes can be inside, outside or mean. A sketch line from bottom centre to top centre places the part and sets its height; change the line and the part follows. Started with no sketch, it asks for a plane and opens the Line tool.
• The part is made from a number of equal pieces, each a sheet metal body with its own flat pattern: a cone from one piece or more, a flat-sided transition from two or more, with seams at the middle of the flat sides or at the corners.
• Formed (rolled, with a set number of forming lines per corner or round the whole part) or bent (bump formed with a set number of bends).

Edge Flange

Click straight edges on the top or bottom face.

Miter Flange

A flange with a profile of up to four segments along a chain of edges. Each segment has a length (to the outside of the bends) and an angle; a negative angle folds back the other way, so 90 / 90 makes a C and 90 / −90 a Z. The corners are mitred (closed, with a gap) at every level. First bend sets where the material sits on the edge, as for an edge flange.

Hem

Folds a straight edge back on itself. Hems meeting at a corner are mitred.

Sketched Bend

Draw lines on the top or bottom face of a flat part of the sheet; the sheet is bent along each one. Set the angle, the radius (or the part's), whether the bend is centred on the line or starts or ends at it, the fold direction and which side stays put. The flat pattern stays the plate it was.

Jog

One sketch line on a face makes two opposite bends that step the sheet over by a height. The height is measured face to face, outside to outside or inside to inside; the jog says when the height is too small for the bends.

Cross Break

Click flat faces to mark an X of shallow stiffening folds. It shows in Flatten, in the DXF (on the Forming marks layer, with a note) and in flat pattern drawings.

Tab and Slot

Click the edge of one sheet metal part where it sits on another, then the face of the other part. Tabs are added along the edge and matching slots, with clearance all round, are cut through the other part, so the parts locate each other for welding.

• Settings: number of tabs, tab length, tab height (empty: through the other part), margin at each end (empty: evenly spread) and clearance.
• Both flat patterns and DXFs get the tabs and slots.

Forming Tools

Forming Tools presses a form into the sheet. Place forms at clicked points, or exactly at the points and circle centres of a sketch on the face (for a louver, its lines). They are pressed toward the face they are placed on, or the other way.

The flat pattern gets a centre mark and a note for each form, an extruded hole's pre-hole (the collar laid flat) and a louver's slit as a cut. Forms stay with the part through later sheet metal features and are left off, rather than breaking the part, if one can't be made.

Gusset

Click a bend (its round face) to press a stiffening dart across it at that point. Set the size of each leg from the inside corner and the width across the bend; tick Pressed down to press it the other way. The flat pattern marks it. (For gusset plates between structural members, see the Fast Structure chapter.)

Corner Relief

Adds a rectangular, circular or tear relief at every corner where two bends meet.

Closed Corner

Closes the corners between 90° flanges: one flange covers the other's end, with a gap.

• Corner type: Overlap, Underlap or Butt (mitred, gap across the mitre, bends included).
• Which corners: click a face of a flange next to a corner and the matching flange is found automatically; the clicked flange is the one that overlaps or tucks under. With no corners picked, every corner of the body is closed.
• Swap reverses which flange covers.
• Bend region: V cutout (default) runs each bend into the corner as it would form from the flat, leaving a small teardrop-shaped opening with a relief at the corner point. Closed keeps the bends meeting on the diagonal.
• The flat pattern matches the folded part at closed corners, including each bend's run-on, the relief and the corner round.

Unbend and Bend

Unbend keeps the picked face in place and flattens the rest. Features after it (such as cuts across bends) are made in the flat. Bend folds it back to where it was. Both appear in the tree.

Cuts and other features on sheet metal

Cuts on sheet metal (extruded cut and so on) become holes in the flat pattern, so the flat pattern always matches. Holes (the Hole feature) work on sheet metal too. Other features that change a sheet metal body are allowed, but the flat pattern can't follow them; this is shown in Body Properties and the DXF preview.

Flatten

Click Flatten on the tab, or right-click the body ▸ View Flat Pattern. The flat pattern is shown on its own; Esc or Flatten again restores the view as it was. While it is shown, Export DXF… on the flat pattern banner (or right-click the view) exports it straight away.

Convert to Sheet Metal

Turns an ordinary body into sheet metal. Pick a flat face of a thin-walled body (for example a STEP export of a sheet metal part, or a shelled box), or of a knitted surface of flat faces (enter the thickness).

• RazorCAD follows that side of the sheet across every smooth edge, through flat faces and cylindrical bend faces, so the whole body is found. Each bend keeps its own radius and angle.
• Bends that run straight into each other with no flat between (rolled shapes such as a fan scroll) are joined automatically. Cut-outs in bends are kept and holes stay true circles in the DXF.
• Sharp-cornered bodies (shelled boxes) get bends of the chosen radius at every edge between two flat faces.
• The panel shows what was found in the body, for example "thickness 3 mm · bend radii R300, R227, R13 (inside, 3 bends)" or "4 sharp edges".
• Use the body's thickness and Use the body's bend radii are on by default. Untick either to set your own value (pre-filled with the detected one).
• After converting, the sheet's volume is compared with the body's. The feature note warns when they differ by more than 0.5 % (for example a nut or motor part that isn't sheet metal).
• A curved surface that is curved one way only (a cylinder, or a profile swept straight) is converted into a rolled sheet: its section is followed by smoothly joined arcs, each a bend of its own radius. Arc fit tolerance (default 0.05 mm) sets how closely it follows the surface. Thickness goes behind the surface, in front of it, or both sides.
• Trim where the sheet would run into itself (on by default) trims a rolled sheet back where its two ends would meet, leaving a small clearance.

Sheet Metal Check

Sheet Metal Check lists every bend of the sheet metal body: direction, angle, inside radius, length and the straight flange on each side. It warns about flanges shorter than 3 × thickness past their bend, and holes closer than 2 × thickness + radius to a bend.

Sheet metal Body Properties

Body Properties for a sheet metal body shows thickness, bend radius and K-factor, number of bends, overall flat size, flat area, mass and quantity, plus:

• Cut length: the total length of the flat outline plus every hole and cut-out, and the number of pierces (closed contours), for laser-cutting estimates. Also shown in the DXF part information and under flat pattern drawing views.
• Flat pattern seen from: top face or bottom face. The bottom face mirrors the pattern and swaps UP / DOWN bend lines and notes. Flatten, DXF export and drawing views all follow it.

Exporting flat patterns as DXF

• Right-click a sheet metal body (tree or view) ▸ Export Flat Pattern as DXF, or Export DXF on the tab.
• Export All DXF: choose a target folder; one file per body, named after the body. Identical bodies give one file with the quantity multiplied by the count.
• Each file is shown in a preview window with its layer colours and line types, which can be changed there. Buttons: Export, Skip This One and Abort Export.
• In the preview, zoom with the wheel, pan by dragging and double-click or Fit to see it all. Click lines to select them (Ctrl or Shift adds, Shift+drag for a box, Ctrl+A for all), then Delete them, give them their own Line type, or move them to another Layer (for example make a line an etch line). Undo and Restore All put them back. These edits apply to that one export.
• Options: bend lines, bend notes, bend region (hidden) lines, etch lines and part information.

DXF Settings

DXF Settings on the Sheet Metal tab sets the defaults for every export: layer mapping (colours and line types) and options. Defaults: up bends red, down bends blue, etch lines yellow dashed. Reset to Defaults restores them.