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This can be found in the Right-click menu under Faces, the Direct Editing or Surfaces CommandManager tabs, or Insert > Face > Delete Face.

Click New Search to find and select all faces that meet this criteria, then click Close. In the Filters and Parameters box, scroll to the very bottom and select Surface type. Select Faces under the Select What section. Open Power Select from the Select drop-down menu. To remove excess curved faces, Power Select can be used to quickly select all of the faces, and the Delete Face command can be used to remove them.

Additionally, any end cuts on the pipe must be removed/suppressed, as these will result in a shortened pipe once flattened. The first step is to remove all of the extra rounded faces of the tube, as the Insert Bends command will consider these sheet metal bends. While this method will give you a better approximation of the unbent length when compared to the bent centerline length (the sketch that would be used for a Weldments part), consider creating test parts to determine an appropriate bend allowance value for the most accurate results.īefore converting the design into a Sheet Metal part, some pre-processing steps are required. However, please begin by reviewing this article, as it covers important pre and post-processing techniques that will be leveraged in Part 2.ĭisclaimer: the calculations made by SOLIDWORKS to determine the material stretch, or bend allowance, are specific to sheet metal designs, and may not be accurate for hollow pipe/tube. For more complex cases (such as bends in multiple planes, as shown below), please refer to Part 2 in the series (coming soon).

It should be noted that this article is Part 1 of a two-part series, and is geared toward “simple” bent tubes, or tubes that have bends only in one plane, as pictured above. The easiest way to achieve this for both native SOLIDWORKS and imported parts is by using the Insert Bends Sheet Metal tool to flatten the major bends. Their goal was to get an unbent length to work with as well as locate holes along the tube. This topic came from a recent customer question of how to get a flattened or unbent version for bent square pipes.