SOLIDWORKS applies Corner Treatment to a Flattened Sheet Metal Part

  

When you create a sheet metal part and unsuppress the flat-pattern feature, you may discover that the flattened result is not what you expected. An example of unexpected flat pattern results is described in this tech tip. A simple sheet metal part which includes an edge flange is depicted in Fig. 1:

Fig. 1: Example Sheet Metal Part

Unsuppressing the flat-pattern feature will be result in the following figure. It seems that the flatten sheet metal is ripped off at the gap location between the two edges that define the Edge Flange feature.

Fig. 2: Flattened Sheet Metal with Corner Treatment

Corner Treatment Effect on Flatten Sheet Metal

Users should be aware that when a sheet metal is flattened, Corner Treatments are automatically applied to flattened sheet metal. In some cases similar to the example shown here, the designer may not want to have such a long gap inside their flattened sheet metal. To resolve this issue you can simply clear the Corner Treatment option in the flat-pattern feature:

Fig. 3: Corner Treatment disabled

As a result, the gap between edge flanges does not penetrate into the flattened sheet metal state (see figure below)

Fig. 4: Flatten Sheet Metal without Corner Treatment