Sheet Metal Design

Created by Kyle Oickle on 19 June, 2018

So as you all know, you can't place a hole next to a sheet metal bend as the hole would deform due to the material stiffness.

Normaly you place a hole 2 times the materil thickness from a bend to stop the deforming, but sometimes you just can't.

In that case you can use a bend relief kerf to stop the deforming but is there an easy way to do this in inventor?


I like using the flange and contour flange function a lot because its fast but this functions dont work properly when the hole is to close to you bend:

example 1: Using flange function


To make this work i use the fold option, make a sketch of the whole part, make a kerf at the exact bending line and fold it right there at the center of the kerf:

example 2: making a custom bend relief kerf to stop the deforming of the hole.


As you can understand this take a lot of time in more complex assembly, especially when changing the bend line, you then have to move the kerf first.


is there an easier way in Inventor to do this?


*Using Inventor 2020 if it helps.

*Sorry for the bad english.