Bend Relief and Corner Relief Feature Operations

Overview

Use the SMFLANGEEDGE, SMRELIEFCREATE, SMJUNCTIONSWITCH, and SMRELIEFSWITCH commands.

Reliefs are needed in sheet metal parts to avoid material tear when bent on press breaks. Basically you must not care about reliefs, because BricsCAD automatically creates all needed reliefs when you create a bend (implicitly or explicitly). However, if you rework poor sheet metal parts, you may find it useful to create corner and bend reliefs with the dedicated tools.

Corner Reliefs and Junctions

When you create a flange using the SMFLANGEEDGE command, adjacent to a bend edge, a corner relief is created automatically in the corner where the 3 flanges meet. In addition, a junction is created between the 2 flanges, which are not connected with a bend.

Creating Missing Reliefs

  1. Do one of the following:
    • Click the Create Relief tool button (
      ) on the Sheet Metal ribbon tab.
    • Choose Create Relief in the Sheet Metal menu.
    • Type SMRELIEFCREATE in the Command line.
      You are prompted: Select a hard edge, bend face, flange face or 3D solid [Entire model]:
  2. Select an item.
    Enter relief size by bend radius ratio or [force Bend reliefs/Auto] <Auto>:
  3. Do one of the following:
    • Press Enter or right-click to accept the default bend radius ratio.
    • Type a value at the command prompt, then press Enter.
      The relief is created.
Selected bend faces Created reliefs
Note:
  • The selected items can be a 3D solid with sheet metal features, a face or a hard edge of the solid.
  • To create a relief locally, you can select 1 or 2 hard edges, 1 or 2 bends or a bend and a hard edge.
  • If a 3D solid is selected, the command recognizes the places where corner or bend reliefs are needed and creates them automatically.
  • If 2 hard edges or 2 bends or a bend and a hard edge at a corner are selected, the command tries to create a corner relief.

Option force Bend reliefs forces creation of the bend relief even if there is no need to create a bend relief. As shown in the image below, there is no need to create a bend relief, but the geometry is different from rectangular cut.
A bend relief is not needed because of a smooth transition of the geometry. A rectangular bend relief is created only if the option force Bend reliefs is enabled.

Switching the Bend Relief Type

The bend relief type can be switched between 4 types:
Rectangular Smooth Round Rip
Note:
  • A Rip relief has a very small width of 0.001 * thickness. If you need to remove the relief completely, change its width to 0. This operation removes both the bend relief geometry and the bend relief feature.
  • Smooth, Round and Rip bend relief types can be applied only if the current bend relief type is Rectangular.

Using the ribbon, menu or toolbar

  1. To choose the desired relief type, do one of the following:
    • Click the Relief drop-down button in Sheet Metal / Modify panel on the ribbon and select Switch to Rectangular, Switch to Smooth, Switch to Round or Switch to Rip.
    • Click a tool button on the SM Relief toolbar: Switch to Rectangular Relief (), Switch to Smooth Relief (
      ), Switch to Round Relief (
      ) or Switch to Rip Relief (
      ).
    • Choose the relief type in the Sheet Metal / Relief menu.
      You are prompted: Select faces, 3d solids to switch reliefs to V-type [RECtangular/CIrcular/V-type/SMooth/RIp/ROund/relief EXtension/Entire model] <Entire model>:
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Press Enter to apply the selected relief type to the entire model.
    • Click a neighboring flange or bend or a face of the bend relief.
      The bend relief is converted.
  3. If the command has been called from the Ribbon, the command repeats the main prompt until you press the ESC key to stop.

Using the Quad

  1. Hover over a neighboring flange or bend or a face of the bend relief.
    If the Select Faces option of the SELECTIONMODES system variable is selected, the flange or face highlights; otherwise hold the CTRL key down when hovering until the face highlights.
  2. Select the desired relief type in the Sheet Metal tab in the Quad menu.

Switching the Corner Relief Type

The corner relief type can be switched between 3 types:
Rectangular Circular V-type

Using the ribbon, menu or toolbar:

  1. To choose the desired relief type, do one of the following:
    • Click the Relief drop-down button in Sheet Metal / Modify tab on the ribbon and select a relief type.
    • Click a tool button on the SM Relief toolbar.
    • Choose the relief type in the Sheet Metal / Relief menu.
      You are prompted: Select faces, 3d solids to switch reliefs to V-type [RECtangular/CIrcular/V-type/SMooth/RIp/ROund/relief EXtension/Entire model] <Entire model>:
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Press Enter to apply the selected relief type to the entire model.
    • Click a neighboring flange or bend or a face of the corner relief.
      The corner relief is converted.
  3. If the command has been called from the Ribbon, the command repeats the main prompt until you press the ESC key to stop.

Using the Quad:

  1. Make sure the Select Faces option of the SELECTIONMODES system variable is selected.
  2. Hover over a neighboring flange or bend or a face of the corner relief.
  3. Select the desired relief type in the Sheet Metal command group in the Quad menu.