Miter flange - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

- [Instructor] The miter flange is definitely one of the most powerful sheet metal tools and let me show you how it works. More than likely we are gonna be seeing this on the exam, so definitely pay attention. So the first thing I need to do is create a sketch that will define the shape of the flange. Now I'm gonna choose any outside surface like this one here, this one here, this one over here, or this one over here. All right, so in this case here I'm just gonna choose and say this one here. Go ahead and start a sketch on that surface and go ahead and start with a line command. And I'm gonna go up here to the upper corner and just start defining a shape. Now I can define a single line. I can define two lines. I can define three lines, and in fact I can even define four or five or as many lines as I really want all to define the shape of that flange. Now if you look at it like this you can see we're gonna take this flange here and we're gonna make it go down this way there. And then I can then make it go and follow around the outside profile of the shape. You can use multiple flanges or just create one individual flange at a time. But what really uses the power of the miter flange is when you get to corners. 'Cause it's automatically gonna miter those corners for you. And let me show you how that works. So the first thing I wanna do is exit out of that sketch for right now. Then come over here to Sheet Metal and click on Miter Flange. All right, there it is because I already had that sketch predefined it just chose that sketch. And it also chose the edge that it was going along. Now if you didn't already have an edge selected or that sketch selected it would probably ask you to select this sketch here, as well as an edge to go along. Obviously, it has to go along a edge that makes sense in the shape of the flange. Okay, next I can choose another edge how about this one over here. Notice what happens in the corner here it actually miters everything together which would be a huge amount of work if you didn't have this tool. I can continue on, if I'd like to. And again, it's just gonna keep mitering those flanges as you go around the shape. This is just a basic rectangular shape but you can have a much more complicated piece of sheet metal and choose the outside edges of it and the miter flange will solve all of this for you. So it's a very very powerful tool. You're more than likely gonna see at least one instance of the miter flange so understanding how it works is really important. It's a little bit more complicated than you might see but it's all gonna work exactly the same. Choose a perpendicular face, create a sketch, create the flange, pretty straightforward and easy to do. Go ahead and click on that green check mark. And save it out and there you can see we've created a very complicated shape all with a very very simple tool using the miter flange technique.