Sheet metal design and unfolding software

Modern Machine Shop, Sept, 2000 by Elizabeth M. McPhail

The company has released its latest sheet metal design and unfolding software. The newly released SS-Solid Design and SS-Solid Unfold products are said to bring advanced sheet metal design and unfolding technology to Mechanical Desktop Release 4.0. Included are commands for creating sheet metal enclosures along with a wide array of features, such as various notches, tabs, flanges and hole shapes. Designers are able to create sheet metal parts in a fraction of the time, according to the company. Parametric associations are automatically defined through the design process, and the Quick Edit system automatically recognizes model features for real-time editing. Part models are unfolded automatically and, with the addition of Fab Professional manufacturing software, can be tooled for CNC programming from within the Mechanical Desktop environment.

An additional user benefit of the SS-Solid Unfold product is its ability to also unfold parts that are not solid models. The program includes a module to unfold conventional wire-frame CAD geometry. This feature is said to relieve the designer from having to reconstruct the part as a solid model to unfold it or manually calculate the flat blank.