About Contour Flanges in Sheet Metal

You create a contour flange from an unconsumed or shared open profile sketch. Closed profiles are not valid input.

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 use a contour flange as the base feature of the design, a distance parameter is supplied rather than an edge selection.

As with standard flange features, you can create a contour flange feature using:

Multi-edge contour flanges created with the Apply Auto-Mitering checkbox selected have material trimmed from both flanges which may have intersected at the end of each flange. The Auto-Mitering option is in the Corner Defaults group in the Contour Flange property panel.

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 where the created flanges share corners. Using these glyphs, you can change the bend width and corner parameters from the defaults. You can reset corner parameters to the default feature style with the Reset All Corners functionality.

Tips for selecting edges and loops for contour flange