I have a high school student who would like to make a 6' fork out of .06" sheet metal for our high school cafe. He's done a masterful job of planning and designing it ... and I'm not having much luck getting SW's to make and flatten sheet metal parts.

What's been done:

• make a side profile (avoiding splines), extrude it as a surface, cut that extrusion with a top profile of the fork, and thicken. The end result is in orange below.
• make pairs of 3D sketches and make a Lofted-Bend between them.
• or, use Convert to Sheet Metal
• the result is the grey model ... though each and every surface is its own sheet metal piece

The end goal will be to send the pieces to a CNC plasma cutter and Tig weld them together.

So, my wish is to not have dozens of pieces to weld together, but rather have a single top surface, bottom surface, and then as few sides pieces as is practical. However, every time I make a 3D sketch of more than a single edge it fails to make the Lofted-Bend.

Thanks,

Steve