CAD Forum

Hi, I have a model of a corrosion patch on a flat steel plate and need to model the corrosion spot on an 8-inch pipe contoured to the OD. I have tried converting the plate into a sheet metal body and then bending it 360-degrees into a pipe. This does not work as sheet metal requires a flat planar face and a constant thickness.
I also tried pulling the surface of the corrosion off the plate then using the flex function to bend the surface to the OD diameter then extruding the pipe up to that corrosion surface. This did work, however the corrosion surface became muted and smoothed removing most of the original detail.

Not sure if there are many other options in Solidworks. Worst case scenario I put the data into excel and create a curve that bends the profile.

Cheers, any help would be great.

Can you send the corrosion patch? I think I can come up with something for you. You'd model something you can bend, and then replace the inner face of the tube, or a portion of it, with a face from the bent part. I think I can make a sample for you.

Great thanks Matt. Attached is a part file of the surface.

Ok, there are 3 things that can bend a model:
1) Sheet metal
2) Flex feature
3) Wrap, but wrap only wraps sketches

The sheet metal feature will remove any non-thickness features when you fold it. So that was a bust.
And the Flex feature removes a lot of detail from the surface when it is bent:

So, sorry. I think you'll need to find another way to do this. Unless I'm missing something.

Longshot...

Map as points in cartesian plane, then convert point to cylindrical CSYS.

Maybe BlankWorks or Logopress?