Sheet Metal Flat Pattern Boundry for all configs?

SOLIDWORKS SW General
1

I have recently been creating a single file of about 200+ configurations of a sheet metal part.
My company plans to upgrade to solidworks 2020 in a month or two and am trying to get ahead on figuring this out.

I need to include the blank size of my part in a custom property. There are two givens for my blank size that I can get easily(gauge and length) and I need the third that tells me what the width is when it is flattened.
Is there a way to get this dimension with perhaps using the bounding box? I would like to automate this process if possible instead of manually going through each 200+ configurations and figuring out the details.
I am on 2017 currently and the bounding box is available for 2018 and up.

2

I’m assuming you’d want each of these properties to update dynamically as well? I know that manually doing this 200 times is tedious, but you could just create a new custom property and link it to:

“SW-Bounding Box Width@@@Cut-List-ItemX@PartX.SLDPRT”

3

I was looking into this “@@@” format and it seems like this is a cutlist property callout?
This doesn’t work for my 2017 version at the moment and will need to wait another month or two before I can upgrade and apply this.

4

How can I do it in a template. Because the template has no cut list or part name yet.
Thank you.

5

That format does seem to be specific to cutlist property callouts, though I’m not certain…sorry, I can’t be more sure.

6

Unfortunately you’ll have to manually add these properties after you know the cutlist and part names, unless you invoke some sort of API, but that wouldn’t be trivial

7

Thank you.

8

Can anybody upload a part, where this works? Can’t get it working and don’t know how to link Bounding Box -dims to properties in sheet metal parts. I’m using SW 2022.

9

You will have to type the property and it would link.
image.png
You can also look at this macro https://www.codestack.net/solidworks-api/data-storage/custom-properties/link-sheet-metal/

10

Thanks, Deepak!

Macros are always interesting! Need some time to study this one. It looks running, but must modify to our needs if this is the way to go.

Did not understand Sheet<1> in your property -input. So manual property input did not work.

11

Added some rows to the macro and looks better now:

Sub Init(Optional dummy As Variant = Empty)
    
    Set Map = New Collection
  
    Map.Add CreateMapValue("T1", "Sheet Metal Thickness", "")
    Map.Add CreateMapValue("W1", "Bounding Box Width", "")
    Map.Add CreateMapValue("L1", "Bounding Box Length", "")
        
End Sub

To the end of main sub:

    Dim newVal2 As String
    newVal2 = "PL$PRP:" & """T1""" & " .. $PRP:" & """W1""" & " x $PRP:" & """L1"""
    
    swTargetCustPrpMgr.Add2 "Dim2", swCustomInfoType_e.swCustomInfoText, newVal2
    swTargetCustPrpMgr.Set "Dim2", newVal2

Remember upgrade custom properties from old documents (possible with SW2022 ->).

12

Sheet<1> is the cut list item name.
image.png
I’ve also attached the 2022 part file for your reference.
Link Custlist Property to Custom Property (SW2022).zip (56.9 KB)

13

Thanks, Deepak! All clear now! :slight_smile: