Hello,

I have been using SW for about 8 years now and have never before had a reason to use the simple hole feature until recently.   But I have had some issues along the way and would like some feedback.

I am designing a part made of 10ga steel sheet metal that will be run across a laser.   This is a rectangular part with a series of holes in it that will be sent through one rolling operation that creates long wavy corrugations and then through a second rolling operation to curve the part.     

The holes on this part need to match up with our main line parts that are cut off from a coil of sheet steel to length and run through a large progressive die that adds the holes prior to the corrugation and rolling.  The part I am working on is being created so we can laser cut in unique holes into the sheet to eliminate any hand cutting for specialty cutouts.

The image below shows the profile of the corrugations.  I omitted the exact dimensions for proprietary reasons.   But they are approximately 4.75" from center of hill to center of hill, approximately .5" in depth from hill to valley with roughly a 3.2" radius at the hills and valleys.   The final height of the corrugated sheet is roughly 44" tall and 61.5" long.

The image below shows how the holes will fit in the corrugations after the corrugation operation.   Note that the holes are centered in the hills and valleys of the corrugations.

I created these holes using the fold and unfold tools.   See the image below.   I had to create these holes on the flat as there is a set standard on the locations of these holes within the company I work that are based off of the flat.  

I found through trial and error that the only way to get my holes to transfer from the formed configuration to the flat was to use the simple hole tool.   I attempted the hole wizard first as I know how much beneficial this feature is further down the road with respects to drawings and assemblies, but the holes did not transfer to the flat pattern as they were laid out before folding.   I also tried to do a cut extrusion but, again, the holes did not transfer to the flat pattern as they were laid out before folding.   For what ever reason, only the simple hole tool feature transferred the holes over to the flat pattern as they were positioned from the fold unfold tools.

The problem I came across after getting the holes to properly show up in the flat pattern was that my holes came out as ellipses.  I did not expect this as the holes were created using the fold and unfold tools and should come out as circular entities.   

I was able to get around this by tricking my flat pattern configuration to show the part as it is in the unfolded state.   I did this by suppressing my flat-pattern in the feature tree and suppressing the fold feature.   This was not ideal, but it did give me an accurate flat pattern.

I have been able to get the results I need to create a drawing and dxf's for our nesting software, but I am not very satisfied with the way I had to do it.   I am hoping someone may have had a similar scenario and could provide some explanations or suggestions.

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,