Folded plates of various shapes are widely used in various fields of steel construction: stair ramps for buildings, pipe connection, gas ducts in petrochemical industry, etc. Usually these elements are difficult to model without 3D view, also, obtaining the workshop drawings is a time consuming task.
With Advance Steel it only takes two clicks to create an element, for example, a conical shape from two CAD entities (circle, square, etc.) or between two profiles with different diameters or different sections. All necessary documents (including NC files) are created directly from the model with a simple click. All folded elements are displayed unfolded in workshop drawings which means great cost and time saving.
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Various shapes created in no time!
Automatic tools are available to create plates of any shape. It only takes a few clicks to create a folded element.
All shapes are accepted and can be easily created using a complete set of intuitive tools.
- Rectangular plates (with one central point, two or three points)
- Polygonal plates (created from a polyline)
- Any contour can be cut to get the desired shape
- Holes can be created
Conical and twisted plates
Just two clicks to create a wide variety of complex irregular shapes such as:
- A conical shape from two CAD entities (circle, square, etc.) or between two profiles with different diameters.
- Square – to circular folded elements
- Twisted elements from two curves or splines
Easy to modify while working in 3D
Once created, the folded plate is treated as a single element.
It can be easily modified without loosing the relations between the elements.
Cut any contour
- Create any type of contour cuts on any of the faces or on the folded line
- Create holes of any type: round, slotted, countersink, etc.
- Trim or split any of the joined plates
Add weld preparations
Weld preparations are frequently required for heavy plate fabrication.
With Advance Steel, any chamfer (straight or fillet) can be added to a folded plate edge for weld preparation.
Secure modeling
At any moment it is possible to check if the created plate can be developed into one sheet of material. This insures a correct modeling – very important as Advance Steelcreates automatically the workshop drawing directly from the model.
The unfold representation can be displayed also during modeling.
Accurate drawings created automatically!
Advance Steel automatically creates workshop drawings of all folded plates! All necessary information is included:
- The unfolded representation
- Folding line
- Bending direction
- Folding angle
- Dimensions
Bend allowance calculation
The end-user can control the bend allowance calculation when getting automatic workshop drawings with the representation of the part unfolded.
There are different available choices:
- By inner contours
- By outer contours
- By pure median line
- By DIN
- By table