Solidworks Sheet Metal Drawing No Flat Pattern

Solidworks users occasionally come across a sheet metal drawing view that displays formed bent part instead of flat pattern.

Solidworks sheet metal drawing no flat pattern.

So here goes i will explain what is happening in the background and give a few best practices to ensure the setup is correct. Solidworks creates flat pattern configuration when the drawing of a sheet metal part is generated. You may have to do a rebuild in your drawing. You can create dxf files of sheet metal flat patterns without flattening the part.

Open the sheet metal part for which you want to add a drawing. Now when you go back to your drawing it should be good. When the flat pattern drawing view of a solidworks sheet metal part displays the part in the bent condition this can indicate an issue with the suppression state of the flat pattern feature. Select process bends and all of the features after it.

Click edit suppress this configuration to suppress all of the selected features. From the view palette drag the flat pattern to the drawing sheet. The next time the user created a sheet metal part and then created the flattened drawing view it worked correctly. Some items to note about the flat pattern feature.

So when the drawing view was inserted solidworks could not automatically create the configuration and set the sheet metal state to flattened. Usually the reason for the flat pattern not coming through to the drawing sheet is not completely understanding what solidworks completes in the background. The solution was to open a new part document delete the defaultsm flat pattern configuration and resave the document template. In a sheet metal part create a new configuration.

Click make drawing from part assembly standard toolbar and click ok to open the drawing sheet. The use the sheet metal flatten tool. In the featuremanager design tree do one of the following. In the flat pattern propertymanager under parameters select recreate flat pattern.

Wrong flat pattern in view palette. Here is the explanation of a common mistake that causes this problem. Neil bucalo technical analyst computer aided technology inc. Jody go to your part file and double click on the defaultsm flat pattern config.

Looks like you accidentally unflattened while in the defaultsm flat pattern config. Then double click on the default config.