Inventor Sheet Metal from Start To Press

KELLY YOUNG: Good morning, everyone. My name is Kelly Young. I work for Autodesk. I'm the Inventor technical support specialist, which basically means, if you call up and have questions, you'll probably get me. So if you ever need to schedule a call, you'll probably find myself. So today we're going to learn about some sheet metal. So first off, I'm going to take you through my experience, as far as how I got started with CAD stuff, and go from there, and lead you in. And then we'll get on our computers, fire you up, and hopefully you'll learn something.

So this is the first thing I ever drew back in high school in 1997, the [? Sabin Skills ?] Center in Milwaukie, Oregon. Habitat for Humanity is what we first got involved with, doing little foam core stuff. R13 was what we used for AutoCAD, basically just doing details, things like that-- did the high school McDonald's competition. And so basically, you can see the little arches there. We had it so you could drive-through the arches.

But unfortunately, being young and dumb as I was, we did the drive-through so it was the wrong way, so you had to pay through the passenger side. So about three weeks left, I realized that, and I was like, oh, maybe we should start over. So I had to redesign the whole kitchen-- got second place. So then they didn't build our McDonald's.

So then, after that, I went to Western Oregon University, ran track and cross-country there, and did computer science-- quickly found that I do not like coding. So I transferred to Arizona State and did architecture. So here's some of the drawings we did there-- started doing little fun models.

For the first two years, it was pretty much practical architectural stuff, historical stuff-- didn't even get on a computer. I realized, after I started doing job interviews and things like that, didn't really want to be an architect. So I transferred over to the design portion and started doing advanced machining. This is a business card holder that we made, but just got on some CNC machines, figured out how to mill out things like that-- went through and did first article inspection, started getting the drawings.

They wanted us to use SolidWorks. I used Inventor, because I liked it better teacher-- didn't know the difference, which was not good. So then we anodized the parts that came out red, and that's on my desk today holding some business cards. So after that, I got a job at Aerospace Contacts in Tempe, Arizona. They had 53 screw machines. They have [? decos, ?] [? sugamis, ?] [? turnos, ?] things like that-- pretty much pumping out 10,000 parts a day, 24/7.

So it was a really rapid environment where parts would come in. These are some examples of some of the sectional views of these little parts, assemblies. Typically, it was like a beryllium copper part that was then plated with nickel and then gold. So you have mil-specs that basically go up to four decimal places. That's basically size of an average part. That's kind of a bigger part-- a lot of tiny little things.

So started getting [INAUDIBLE] documentation, figuring out how to do drawings, how to annotate things-- this is a standard drawing that we had. You basically get your part number, get your crimping forces, you're plating, and then engagement separation, and things like that. Got into a little bit of [? I logic ?] at this point, but not much, trying to figure out the easiest way to design something.

When I actually started-- like I said, knew how to use AutoCAD. I got to the aerospace job, and they dropped Mastering Inventor 2010 on my desk and said, here you go-- learn how to use Inventor. So if I can do it, you guys can too. More examples of fancier parts as we got along, and as I got better at my job, doing drill bit design for actually making and manufacturing the parts-- so we didn't have to outsource that.

And so basically, we figured that we can make multi-step drill bits. So you could basically clear the part and then come back with a finish, and it actually gave us two steps, rather than pecking at it and then finishing it later-- so started speeding up, did some fixtures designed for bending things. And here's some examples of some of the drill bits-- brooches, and tray pan drills, and things like that.

It's pretty fun-- got a lot of helical things-- crashed my computer a whole bunch. So if there's one thing I can tell you, it's don't get frustrated if you break it. You will crash Inventor. You will have problems. Move on. Keep going. Remember what you did so you don't do it again. Here's a bunch of examples of all the parts that we used to make.

Some of them were crazy. A lot of times, you'd get things coming in that didn't have the right dimensions, so you'd have to call up the aerospace manufacturer and little old me saying, hey, your spaceship or whatever might not be doing so hot, and then go back and forth. So after that, I didn't feel joyous about aerospace stuff, because there is no design intent. It was really just take input, design it, mill it, send it on its way.

So I was like, all right-- moved on, got a job at a door manufacturer, First Impression Security Doors. It's now First Impression Ironworks, works, because probably, we started getting a little more iron stuff. So this is the original drawings that they sent out. So as you can see, it's kind of blah. You don't really know what you're getting. You're like, there's going to be some scrolls that'll show up, and it'll be what it is.

So they hired me and I said, hey, only reason I'm going to do this job is if we do parametric design and we'd use the vault. If we don't have those two things, I won't take the job. And they're like, why do we need the vault? I'm like because, I'm tired of having somebody say, who checked it in, or who's last in, first out? And there's no accountability. So we got the vault implemented, trained about six people.

This is the drawing that they get now. And so as far as that goes, it's a lot cleaner. It gets a little more accurate presentation. You can actually see which way the door opens and you can see the backside of the door. Well, then we took it one step further-- everyone gets a rendering. And this is inside Inventor. This isn't going to 3D Max, or V-Ray, anything like that-- straight from Inventor.

You basically get the front of the door, then you get the back of the door. And the whole thing's parametric. So let's say that somebody else comes in and wants this exact same door. All you say is, all right, change the width, change the height, everything stretches, and all you got to do is redo the scroll work and move it around a little bit. So it pretty much saved a headache of having to redesign every single door, and then you can just do copy design, and then there you go.

So as far as that goes, that's the install door-- night and day. So as far as that goes, here's a couple of examples. And these, again, are all parametric. So for example, this-- you don't even have to redo the scrolls, because it would basically adjust accordingly. So I'm going to show you guys how to of setup parametric models. That way, you design something once-- never do it again, because I hate doing something twice.

And these, again, are all rendered in Inventor. I don't ever go into anywhere else. I could. I just don't really like to because it takes more time, and I think this is good enough for what somebody would need to actually see an idea. And then this is the bane of my existence, having to do these stupid doors-- or these gates-- because every single time, you say, OK, how many wood slats do I have? What's the little remnant guy?

How do we figure this out? Because every single time, you'd have to do it, and then get it, and then put [INAUDIBLE] and then send it out to the guys. So hopefully this works. It does not. Really? OK. That whole thing stretches, and then all the boards update. So then we started getting a more iron stuff, because I pretty much streamlined all the doors. They were like, well, what's next?

Let's start getting to these iron jobs that we really aren't getting. So as far as that goes, see that top-left scroll? It's flipped. So we got it out there, installed it. We were like, yeah-- looks awesome. The guy goes, hey, what about that top-left scroll there? And I was like, well, attention to details-- it's there. So we had to take it down, bring it back.

So I started to get into more gates and fun things like that, giving renderings out to customers, started getting more jobs and things like that-- starting to get into weird pivot doors, where you could basically have a parametric pivot door. So I did this in an afternoon, and then never had to touch a pivot door again.

So this is the kind of parametric design that you're going to basically fall into is where, if you can do it once, saves you a lot of time in the future. Again, same thing-- spiral staircases-- takes forever to build. And you're like, oh, man-- how many stairs, how mean treads? Got it to where you could basically just type in numbers, and the whole thing would update, and then you'd get your staircase [INAUDIBLE] and then we had less time having to deal with the people that are stamping it, because it's basically the same thing.

And so then they see these coming in from us, and they're like, oh yeah-- stamp-- go. I got into ADA compliance, things like that-- just simple renderings from people that wanted weird projects. Got involved with [? a guy at ?] [? Blue Flame ?] here doing fire and water features-- so those were pretty fun. And all these things are parametric, so you basically say, hey, what size do you want at your pool? You just stretch it out and then it spits out the flat pattern.

And we'll go there again [INAUDIBLE] show you how to do that. So this is a collection of all that stuff put together in a single house, if you wanted to spend all your money. So then I got a job at U-Haul International doing their research and development design, which is a pretty cool job-- got in there and started doing all their hitches, and trailers, and stuff like that. And I don't know if you know, but U-Haul pretty much builds everything from scratch-- so all their trailers and stuff like that.

So this is the manufacturing plant in Tempe, Arizona. They do like a small scale, and then they have, I think, five different plants around the United States. So when I started, they were like, hey, we got all these side panels and they're just laying on the ground. That's how we stack them. That's our way to go. We want to make that into a reasonable thing, so-- made this little thing.

And then the guy was using it, and he comes up to me, and he's like thank you so much. My back doesn't hurt. The holes line up. Everything fits together great-- fixed some problems. So everything that comes to U-Haul, that's pretty much what it is. They get the cab and then the rails coming out the back, and they build the boxes themselves. So every single time that a new trailer or truck comes out, you got to redesign the entire back of the box.

So nothing was parametric, so I was like, oh man, all right, let's get this going. People would come up to me and say, hey, we need to design this and make sure it fits in the CAD model-- so drew that up until a couple hours and then give back to him. And he's like, all I wanted was a red blob, and you gave me the entire thing. I was like, well, you get what you ask for.

So that was when we came in one day. I don't know really what they were doing, but that's the service truck with that thing. I can't imagine that romping on the road. I don't think that would probably stay up there. So I started getting to more of the sheet metal and testing out to see where clearances are. Here's the old version and the new version. You can see them side by side, seeing where things are going to fit up and how to hold it.

So on the bottom, I basically needed to make a stand that held the old one and the new one, and making sure that the mount points are the same so you don't have to have two different things-- so then figuring out exactly where those things go. And Inventor lets you do that, and you can do side-by-side comparisons-- things like that.

Just grab that car off a Grab CAD, but I didn't draw that. So pretty much the old drawings that you get are the old fun stuff. And then you bring it into 3D. You can [? get ?] sections, figure out interferences, clearances, things like that. You have legacy data that the holes don't line up, or that in one instance, it was like 0.063 instead of 0.0625. So the guys in AutoCAD were like 0.063 is the same as 0.625. That's fine.

I'm like, no. The software will truncate it for you. You can't do it manually. So then if you have 100 holes, you get 1/2" at the end. And they're like, why don't these things match up? And you're like, well, that's why. So attention to detail is the one thing that's paramount that you pretty much need to pay attention to. Started doing hitches. Somebody wanted a Range Rover hitch for some reason. And I don't know if anybody know this, but U-Haul has the thing that says, we have any hitch for any car ever made. And if you don't have the car, you can bring it to Tempe, Arizona, and we will make one just so we can have that statement.

So if you ever go on their website, and they don't have a hitch, you can drive down to Tempe, leave your car there for a week. and they'll make you one for free, and then put it in the repository. And then it's in the matrix. And then you can have the thing. An Audi A4 convertible, there's no hitch for that. So they dropped their car off from Alabama or something, and then left it there for a week, and then came and picked it up the next week, and then drove home.

I don't know if this one's going to work. So if there's nothing you take away from this weekend, this is how you load a trailer on the front. If you put it on the back, you'll have a bad day. So if any of your kids are traveling or whatever, say, hey, put your fridge in the front, not in the back. Otherwise, traveling to your new house isn't going to be very fun. So yeah. Yeah, not good.

So I helped design some of these things-- did the case for the trailer whipping safe towing thing. Then we had to figure out because we built it, and we're like, oh, this is great. And then we got to the place. And we're like, oh, it's to go into an elevator. I'm like, oh, no. So then we've got to lift this thing up, and then figure out exactly how it fits, and we had to make it smaller. It was a whole thing. So I made these little caster trays, things that slide it around. And we actually made it like a little cover for it. So oh, let's put this cover on it so when we ship it, it won't get dinged up. And I'm like, isn't that the whole point of the kit?

Anyway, so we put it on there, shipped it out to somewhere, and it came back, and it it was shredded. The whole thing was just destroyed. And I was like, that was a good waste of money. Good. So as far as that goes, And then people started returning the U-Hauls. And on the top, when you go to a apartment complex, you just jack it up and smash it into the little covers. You've all seen those.

So we started doing these little mirrors so you can see the top of it. So the tops all dinged up. And you're like, hey, what's this? And they're like, oh, I don't know what that is. You're like, oh, I see what's going on. And then so kind of just general sheet metal stuff, I got real tight with the press brake operator and the plasma cut operator.

That is one thing that I would recommend to anybody in the sheet metal environment. Get to know the people using the stuff. Talk to your press brake people. Let them know. Say, hey, I'm going to make you something. If it doesn't work, let me know. You need to have a constant feedback loop.

Because you can send something out there and think the you're the best thing. You're like oh, yeah. This is going to be awesome. He comes back, and be like, hey, my die can't fit in this bend. I can't get it in there. What am I supposed to do? And you're like, oh, well, what die are you using? They're like, this one? I'm like, I don't know what dyes you have. So figuring out what dyes they have, what the plasma cut guy's running-- can I coordinate with these people?

Let them know. Say, hey, I'm going to make you something. If it sucks, let me know. I'm here to make your job easier, not harder. Then same way around. If there's something you can tell me that makes your life easier, it goes both ways because then I'm not going to get yelled at by my boss, and you're not going to be yelled at for having bad parts.

So as far as that goes, it was slipping. So then I made a beefier one. And then they're like, that's way too beefy. And I'm like, well, you want something. And then I showed up one day, and that just made me giggle. So I thought I'd share that one. I don't where that came from, but somebody had a fun time.

And then we couldn't find a truck. And so the guys were like, you know what? I'm not waiting around for a truck, so they just grabbed a saws all and made a truck. So these are basically some of the things that we made, or I I made from the 2D designs that they had, and basically made it into 3D. And then I got to the point where I pretty much got out of something to do every day because I drew everything. So I was walking around looking for things to do.

And I've always been active in the inventor forums, which I would also recommend all of you get involved with. You don't necessarily have to post all the time but have a voice there. Ask questions. Get involved. Help somebody out. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have the inventor forums. That's a hands down statement. I'm still active in there. So I basically would be bored and be like, all right, well, I'll answer some questions, get some knowledge going on.

And then they basically put a job posting-- said, hey, do you want to work for inventor in the forums? And it was in my hometown of Portland. And so I applied to it, throwing it out into the wind. Yeah, a little plot of that. They called me back, hounded me, and then sure enough, [INAUDIBLE] from the job. So this is just personal stuff where I basically bought a drone because when I flew it around the yard, because I want to put a wall up, and you can kind of figure out how many blocks it's going to be, how many [INAUDIBLE] it's going to be, and because my yard just goes way down. And I'm like, ah, this is terrible. So that's next summer's job.

So I got into the inventor forum, moved back home to Portland. That was the whole deal. And so awesome job working for Autodesk. The main thing is lots of smart people, lots of fun people. Everyone likes working hard, talking to customers, answering customer problems. You guys are all trying to work. So are we. And we want to get you back to work.

So the nesting utility came out in 2019. We figured, hey, we want to basically use it. So why not build an arcade cabinet? So we started getting designs going. Bad Dudes, anyone remember that game? It was awesome. So started designing things. They said, we don't like your gearhawk. And I was like, oh, man. Come on. Let's get some generative design on the side, get some airflow through here.

We did a little caster system where you can step on it, and the whole thing raises. You can move it around. We brought it down to the OMSI, the Oregon Math and Science Institute in Portland, brought it down there. The kids were running around going crazy. So I've also started getting the generative design. So we're like, all right, let's do a generative design on the side panel, and have it light up, and be all fancy. So we did a couple of different tests, and ended up with the one on the right there.

So then we started. OK, we're going to paint this thing somehow. Let's do a gradient paint design with our colors. And so we're like, all right, let's do this one. And then we took off the little wings because I figured somebody'd lean on it, and break it, and I'd be pissed. So I said no. Let's see. So then our buttons came in. And we did a little mock test little thing there-- started going through.

And here's the nesting utility. The main thing is you can see that little shape right there. The nesting utility will put things inside of things, so that way you can actually nest parts very, very well. I had a class, actually, yesterday-- doing it again tomorrow morning 8:30 about the nesting. But it kind of goes through exactly how to do it. It's actually pretty easy. You just right click on the assembly and say Create Nest, and then it brings you in there.

You start to setting it all up. And then you can basically send that out to your sheet metal guys to cut. Let's see. So here's us building it, getting through. Pretty much got out of five sheets. I thought it was going to take eight sheets. But using the nesting utility, we've saved about 2 and 1/2 sheets. So it saved us about $100. So that was awesome.

So there is the quasi finished product. There's Andy peeking at ya. And then here's our paint design, and then getting it all put together. And then here's the final reveal. Oh, boy, looks so fancy. So here's the initial renderings coming out of Inventor. That was pretty much what it's going to look like. And it came out exactly like we thought it would.

AUDIENCE: I love it.

AUDIENCE: Different programs and stuff for it.

AUDIENCE: That looks so good. That's the perfect depth too.

KELLY YOUNG: This is the first time we ever turned it on. And we're always like, that looks way better than any of us thought it was actually ever going to turn out. So there's all the fellas that worked with us, amongst others. There's a whole bunch of people who are actually in it. And then this is the video. And then we're going to get into the rest of it. So here's the Portland office.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

- My name is [? Andrew ?] [? Sears. ?] I am a dedicated support specialist for Inventor and AutoCAD Electrical.

- My name is Kelly Young. I'm the Community Forum specialist for Inventor.

- My name is [? Jason ?] [? Fairley, ?] and I am on the Technical Support Team. And I am one of the technical support managers.

- I'm [? Max ?] [? Straiter. ?]

- [? Andy ?] [? Aikenson. ?] I work on the Inventor Team.

- I'm [? Tim ?] [? Bright, ?] and I work in [? Fusion ?] [? Development. ?]

- I'm [? Adam ?] [? James. ?] I'm a [INAUDIBLE] technical specialist.

- Early on, we started the conversation about how cool it would be to have an arcade cabinet here in the office. And a lot of it happened organically over Slack. So created a PDX, make anything in Slack channel. And two main purposes in this one. It was just to connect people in the office from different teams. And it was awesome to see people from Inventor, Fusion, Support that don't normally interact come together. But the second part was to go through a design-to-make process like our customers using our tool.

- I help with a lot of the design and manufacturing, primarily using Inventor and then any CAD, bringing in diffusion, generative design, helped with the 3D printing, pretty much all around the whole process.

- Did a little bit of everything. One of the big parts is the electronics here for this LED panel here, and in here as well. I was involved in the design, and doing a bit of project management here and there.

- Favorite part was getting to meet everybody throughout the office, and just seeing how well we all cooperated together. And got new friends out of the whole process. That was my favorite part.

- My favorite part of the whole experience is the end result and seeing everyone use it during lunch.

- So another highlights for me has been-- I give a number of tours here in the office to customers and visitors. And I had a customer in for a workshop. We did a whole tour of the office. And it was great for them to see something that the employees do with the software that I'm actually helping them come up to speed on. And it was really a highlight for them of the whole office tour to see something that the employees came together and actually built.

- The nice thing was basically seeing everybody play this. We took it down to the OMSI event, and seeing children and adults running up to it and actually you know getting excited about playing the arcade.

- One of the highlights for me was even getting to build it. When we moved here to downtown Portland, we were told that we were going to be able to interface with lots of customers, and do maybe some vendors, and really start working on a make story. And one of the things that I got excited about was being able to partner with people like CSC Router Parts, or go over to ADX, and be able to mill this thing out.

And just watching people come together from different parts of the office, different groups, and really collaborate on something, and see something that's visually attractive, and actually functional, that was really the highlight for me. Watching people come in from user groups and other external people coming into the office, it's amazing to see that they get excited about stuff like this. And it's something that we made.

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KELLY YOUNG: And then me being me, I 3D printed it. And the whole thing lights up, and you can actually play it. And more ridiculous, it's a tap handle for a beer tap, or-- so you can basically-- yeah. All right, so as far as that goes, time for sheet metal design. So first thing I'll have you do is fire up Inventor. It might give you a little error and say, hey, you need Desktop Connector. We're not going to worry about that. So just hit OK.

All right, so quick show of hands. How many of you know how to use Inventor? All right, cool. Excellent. So some of the stuff might be a little rudimentary. But we're going to go through it. And there's tons of different tutorials and things like that on the internet. I'd recommend watching all of them and looking at everything, reading, getting books, anything. Anything you can get your hands on in your free time, get after it. What I'm going to go through is best practice on getting set up so you don't mess up in the future, and also things that I wish I would have known, and also, how to get it parametric, how to basically name dimensions, get things going.

So first thing we're going to do is fire up Inventor. Everybody got it open? And we are going to go to Projects. All right, so here's our Projects tab. This is basically how you control what's going on. We're going to go to New, and basically, single user. If you ever have the Vault, that's a whole different story. I would recommend getting into it. So our project name, we're going to change this to sheet metal. Hit Next.

You could bring over other stuff, but we're not going to need to do that. So hit Finish. So basically, what this does is sets up our project file for what we're going to do. Now there's two different things. It's basically, what's going on here? Yes. All right, so if you actually look right here, there's two different things. It's read only. So we're going to change this to read right. This is your style library. This is where all your style standards and setups are going to be set.

Also, down here, just to let you know, under Options, there's this old versions. Depending on if you have a backup, I would recommend keeping old versions on. If your files get corrupted, somebody overwrites them, things like that, the old versions will basically save it to the local drive. And then you can grab that for later use. So then we go down to the bottom and hit Save. As far as that goes, once we get in-- let's see here-- let's go into the tools. Let's close this out.

Go into Tools, and go into Customize. I don't know how many people get into the Customize tab. But basically, if this thing will fire up, oh, yeah. That's nice. OK. Well, it's live demo. It's fun. So in the customized tab, what I'm basically talking about is we want to set up some hotkeys. A lot of people don't do this. And if you've ever used AutoCAD, getting the keyboard setup is going to be helpful. So you go to the second tab. It's keyboard. Let's change the category to sketch.

And then you can sort by keys. So these are the only keys that are set up for the sketch as far as that goes. So what we want to do is sort by command name and go to P for project geometry. It's going to be your friend, so right here. Project geometry. Hit P and Enter. If you don't hit Enter, it won't do it. If you hit Cancel, it won't stick. So we're going to hit Apply. So that way, basically, you can go through here and set things up. So for me, personally, like arc, for A is center point arc. I hate it. I want three point arc. So I always delete that and change it.

So pretty much go through and get that setup and dialed in. If you ever have to run the Inventor reset utility, if things are going nuts, which is really easy-- you just go into the Search, and type in Inventor reset utility. It resets it back to the normal environment. If anything's going crazy it resets the profile. But right here, you can export those options.

So as far as that goes, now that we've got our project geometry setup, we'll hit OK. Another thing we'll go into is Application Options. This is pretty much where you set everything up, and get all your Zoom settings, things like that. As far as that goes-- where is this? It is in the Sketch tab. Here we are. And constraint settings, right here is over constrained dimensions. If you ever put a dimension that has parentheses, like a reference dimension, if you don't have this on, it I'll warn you every single time. And if you're pretty good at Inventor, it will make you not happy.

So apply a driven dimension. Hit OK and apply. So through here, you can pretty much get familiar, go through, read everything, figure out where it is. I would recommend getting that. You can always go to your display and change some of these things. You can go to colors, change your background. I always like to do presentation, personally. Everyone says I'm going to burn my eyeballs out, but I'm crazy, so it's OK.

So I'm going to hit Apply for the presentation, just because that's what I like. And close that out. So let's keep going. All right, so the first thing we're going to do is go to New. There's a couple of different ways to get to New. You can go to File, Hit New. It'll bring up a whole bunch of stuff. You can go up here to the top. Hit New. You can drop it down to hit New. There's things.

I always just go up to here and hit the little white piece of paper. It brings up the Create New file. These are all the different types of templates you have. If you basically expand this, there's English, there's metrics, there's different standards in here depending on what you got. There's a whole bunch of metrics in non-English-- don't know why.

So as far as that goes, first thing we're going to do is just go to the NUS, sheet metal IPT. This is the standard sheet metal that comes with you. It's just out of the box, nothing special about it. So we're going to double click on that, and it's going create us a new sheet metal part. All right, so once you come into the sheet metal environment, let's say that you had a regular part, just like you create a new part, not a sheet metal part. You forgot.

Well, you can change it between sheet metal and regular parts by hitting-- let's see. Where is it? I always forget. Here it is. Convert to standard part. So basically, if you're on a sheet metal part, you can say Convert to Sheet Metal, and it will convert it to a sheet metal part. So if you accidentally start off on a regular part, you can do a sheet metal part. And all that really does is lets you into the sheet metal stuff. And this is our main friend, the sheet metal defaults.

A lot of people don't know where this is and this is, and this is the hardest thing to find. So when you get into it, you basically have stuff here, whatever. This is the pencil. This is where you want to go. This, in my opinion, is the most overlooked thing about the sheet metal environment. And also, if you don't have read/write access, just read only, anything you do ain't going to to stick. So if your project file isn't read/write, you're going to basically do all your settings, and then it's not going to stick. And you're going to be very, very angry.

So up here at the top, we're going to hit New. And this basically creates a new local style. So I'm going to call it one-eighth stainless. I'm going to double click on it and have that active. Now what we're going to do here, change that to one-eighth. So basically, that tells it to have that thickness. And then we're going to go to here and find our stainless steel.

So now this is setup. You can have multiple ones. You can have eighth. You can have quarter. Pretty much anything that you use or have in your repository I would recommend putting in here. So most places I work with, we have a stack of-- here's our eighth metal. Here's our other metal. You can set it all up depending on what you guys have in stock. And then at the top, hit Save, and it saves it.

So as far as going through this, there's the flat pattern bent angle, the pattern punch representation, things like that, the K folds. The K factor is something that basically, it looks advanced because it kind of is. If you're having problems with your bends coming out from Inventor to the actual made part, this is where you're pretty much going to come into. And this is kind of advanced stuff where it's going to take some brain thinking. It's not the easiest thing to do. We're not going to get into that today. This is not that kind of class.

But this is where you would go to do that there is definitely on the forum multiple threads about it. There's a link in the actual PDF that goes along the handout that takes you directly to there, then a couple of actual walkthroughs and shows exactly how that is computed. So it makes a little bit more sense. So if we go back to our stainless, here's our bend. So the bend is typically on the thickness. You can change the bend radius to be whatever you want depending on what dyes you're using and all the and things like that.

So then if we go to the corner, here's all the different ones. If you change it, it basically will show you in a preview of what the actual thing is going to be. So depending on what your standard is-- and again, all of these are going to be talked to you about with whoever is making it, which is probably you. But depending on how you're bending it, how you want the parts to come out, that's more of a design decision on you, your company, figuring out what you do, like a laser weld. How is this thing getting put together? Who's making it?

So as far as that goes, we're just going to kind of leave that to trim [INAUDIBLE]. That was just what it was. And as far as your intersection, same thing-- full round, no replacement, things like that. That's pretty much experimental. A lot of the sheet metal stuff is just practice , using it, and figuring out which is actually applicable to you and your company. Depending on what you need, there's different settings for everything.

So for this, we're just going to basically start off with the one-eighth stainless, save all that, Save and Close. So now we're good from here. This should be on one-eighth stainless. So depending on where you're using, that's all good to go. All right, so from here we're going to go to Manage. This is your styles and standards editor. So basically, if you hit Save, this is basically going to say, hey, we got part whatever. Here's our style name. Here's our sheet metal rule. And this is only local.

Do you want to save this to your library so everybody can use it, and it's saved for everybody? So we're going to say yes to all, and hit OK. So now that is in our styles and standards. So our sheet metal template is set up, and we are starting to get good to go. What we're going to do is we want this to be used forever for our sheet metal templates. So we go up to File, Save As, Save Copy As Template.

A lot of people would tell you, oh, just go to the file, find it in your sheet metal whatever, in your actual folder where it is on your desktop. And then open that up and then just save it. That will be fine. Me, personally, I never like to override the standard because let's say I get so far away from home that I have no idea what's going on with my original template. I want that thing to stay, not be overridden so I can always go back to it if I need to return to home and start over again and do this exact same process.

So Save Copy As Template is where we're going to go. It does some things in the background, I think, where it kind of strips everything out and makes it nice and tidy, whereas if you just open it up and save it, it doesn't do that. So that's my thought on that. So on this one, we're just going to call this one sheet metal stainless for good measure. And that'll save it in the folder for future use.

So what we're going to do now is go to New. Actually, I take that back. Let's close out this part. Don't save it. OK, I hate the loading screen, so you can turn that off in application options if you basically want to start. I like to see in the gray screen. I don't do the other thing. But that's just me. I've been using it forever. So it's one of those things where once you get to that point, you hate things so bad that you're like, I want these things to go away. I want [INAUDIBLE].

So a lot of it is customization. So we're going to go to New. And now you'll see that you should have sheet metal stainless right there. So that way, we didn't overwrite our original one. Just double click on it. Now we have new sheet metal styles. You can check on it. We're already set up on our stainless. So every time you open it, up, you know, oh, all my styles are going to be there, and it's going to start on the one-eighth stainless as I saved it as. So that way it saves your step of having to go here and check on it. Now you know every time I start it's going to be on stainless.

So let's get to drawing. First thing, we're going to do is start a 2D sketch. This little thing comes up. We're going to hit our xz plane. And you'll notice in the top right hand corner, I flipped it a little bit. There's a whole conversation about that we're not going to get into. So we're going to rotate it this way. Go over here. Go to our two-point rectangle. When you get to the center point, it'll turn green. Click once, and it basically comes out like so.

So instead of just clicking, we're going to type in-- well, my caps lock on, but that's what I always do-- length equals. And then where do I put on here? I think 36, or no. Length is 60, Tab, width equals 60 or 36. There you go. With this 36, length is 60. All right. So apparently, this double click zoom. If you double click on the mousey bar, it typically zooms to extents. But I think since we're using the frame, it didn't work.

So now you'll notice that basically, we have two dimensions. If you right click and say Display, Dimension Display, as expression, you'll see that it now says length equals 60 and width equals 36. This is one thing that a lot of new users don't do. They do not name their dimensions. Instead, it will just be like D0, D1. And then you get so far down the rabbit hole, you're like, I don't know what this is. How do I find anything?

So I would recommend making your dimensions named every single time you get into it and start it. It will save you in the future. And then we can drive these dimensions later on in life. So we're going to go ahead and finish our sketch. So now we have our regular sketch. This is the face command. Now, typically, we're working with extrusions in regular Inventor. So if you really wanted to, you could go over here and do Extrude. But we're going to do face.