Step Bend

Sheet-Metal Design

General

  • You can create a step bend on a cylindrical, conical or spline surface that has four edge lines.
  • Step bend must be created surface by surface.
  • The rounding of the edges must not overlap.
  • You can step bend a normal part or sheet metal part.
  • The software automatically creates the step bends on both sides of the sheet if you use the step bend function on a sheet-metal part that has a certain thickness.
    • You can define either inner or outer surface as a starting surface and set the bending radius either as bends’ inner or bends’ outer radius.
    • If your step bend does not succeed on a surface selected from the outside, try selecting the surface from the inside of the sheet.

Recommendation on work steps

  • First, step bend a solid volume (image above).
  • After that, create a sheet metal part from the part with the function Offset (Tangential Offset). Image below.
  • In this way, you are more likely to get the end result you want.
  • However, if you first create a sheet metal part from the part and then step bend it, step bending is best achieved if you step bend from the inner surface of the sheet.

Step Bend

  1. Select the ribbon bar function Sheet metal part | Tools | Step Bend.
    • The program opens the dialog box Step Bend Properties.
  2. Click the surface that you wish to step bend.
    • The program adds the surface and its two edge lines to the list.
    • The program highlights the surface with red and the edges with yellow.
  3. Fill in the data in the Step Bend Properties dialog box.
    • Number of edges (2, 3, 4 and 5 edges in the image).

    • Radius (outer or inner radius, depending on which surface you are step bending).
    • A variable in the formula field to control the number of edges or radius size using a dimension table
  4. Click Apply to see how the step bending looks with the values you entered.
    • You can change the selections and inputs.
  5. Select OK.

Step bend the selected surface

  1. Select the surface to step bend.
    • Do not select two surfaces, because the program will not present the function Step Bend
  2. Select the context-sensitive function Step Bend.
    • The program opens the dialog box Step Bend Properties.
  3. Continue as above, steps 3...4.