Fill Pattern Sheetmetal fold unfold

In this blog we will use Solidworks Sheetmetal capabilities along with the Fill Pattern tools to model filter screens or in general perforated cylindrical products.



We will start with a cylindrical sheetmetal part. Next, all what you need to do is to use the Unfold tool under the Sheetmetal command manager (not the Fat pattern tool) to get the unfolded shape of your model.

Now on the developed shape you can directly use the Fill Pattern command to fill
the required area with a one of the standard shpes in the command manger.



In the Fill Pattern property manager you need to select:

The face/boundry of where the pattern will take place, the pattern layout, the distance
between instances, stagger angle, margins distance and pattern direction.

In the next part of the fill pattern property manager you can either select from using the common pattern shapes (circle, square,….,etc.) or use a previously created feature to pattern.



Now let us have a look on the result.



Next, we need to fold the model back to reflect the finished product. To do so, you need to use the Fold tool.



Select the same edge used for the Unfold tool and collect all bends.

Below are the end results using different pattern layouts.



The Fill pattern tool will save you a lot of time and improve the overall model performance.