About Contour Flanges in Sheet Metal

You can create a contour flange from an unconsumed or shared open profile sketch.

The profile sketch consists of lines, arcs, splines, and elliptical arcs. Sharp corners in the geometry profile results in bends in the contour which honor the bend radius value of the sheet metal style.

You can offset the contour flange to either side of the profile sketch, or use the sketched profile as the flange midplane. When you can use a contour flange as the base feature of the design, a distance parameter is supplied rather than an edge selection.

Contour Flange is available only if an unconsumed open profile exists in your part. As with flange features, you can create a contour flange feature using:

• A specific distance.

• From/to positions defined by existing features.

• Offsets from either or both ends of a selected edge.

Multi-edge contour flanges created with the Apply Auto-Mitering checkbox selected has material trimmed from both flanges which may have interfered along the end of each flange. The Auto-Mitering option is on the Corner tab of the Contour Flange dialog box.

You can create a contour flange by selecting several individual edges or an entire loop of edges around a planar face. Contour flanges created using multiple edges use the corner options specified by the sheet metal style, and can be mitered automatically.

While selecting edges for a multi-edge contour flange, edit glyphs display in the graphics window along bends and where the created flanges share corners. Using these glyphs, you can change the bend width and corner parameters from the defaults of the feature with the Bend Edit or the Corner Edit functionality. You can reset all bend widths and corner parameters to the default feature style with the Reset All Bends or the Reset All Corners functionality.

Tips for selecting edges and loops for contour flange

• If necessary, click the right-pointing arrow for Distance, Angle, or Bend Radius to use Measure, Show Dimensions, or List Parameters to set values.
• The profile sketch must be coincident and perpendicular to one of the edges of the loop (not necessarily the edge used to select the loop).
• You can select both a single-edge and a loop within a single contour flange feature.
• The edge selected for your contour flange must be perpendicular to the profile sketch plane.
• It is faster to select a complex loop and then de-select individual edges than to select all edges separately. Select the loop, and after the flange previews, click Edge Select Mode and then CTRL select the edges to cancel.
• You can select multiple edges only if the following conditions do not exist:
  • The start or endpoint of your profile sketch is not coincident with the infinite line defined by the first selected edge
  • The extents option (on the More tab) is set to: Width, Offset, From-To or Distance
  • The selected profile contains geometry other than straight-line or circular arc segments
• When canceling the selected edges from a multi-edge set you cannot cancel the selection of the primary edge that satisfies the criteria described previously.