Introducing NX Sheet Metal

What is Sheet Metal

Sheet metal design is a fundamental discipline in modern engineering, enabling the creation of lightweight, durable, and cost‑effective components used across industries such as automotive, aerospace, electronics, and construction. As manufacturing evolves, digital transformation plays a crucial role in improving how sheet metal parts are conceptualized, modeled, and optimized.

Market trends

Automation: Automation streamlines manufacturing by reducing manual effort, increasing production speed, and improving consistency across processes.
Emerging Markets: Emerging markets offer expanding industrial demand and new business opportunities as developing economies accelerate their manufacturing capabilities.
Additive Fabrication: Additive fabrication enables rapid, layer‑based manufacturing of complex geometries that are difficult or impossible to produce with traditional methods.
Raw material cost: Raw material cost fluctuations directly impact manufacturing profitability, influencing design choices, sourcing strategies, and production planning.
Reshoring: Reshoring brings manufacturing operations back to domestic locations to strengthen supply chain resilience, reduce lead times, and improve quality control.

Customer challenges

Familiar terminology and workflows: The solution uses industry‑standard terminology and intuitive workflows, allowing designers to work efficiently without a steep learning curve.
A fast and easy to use product: Its streamlined interface and intelligent tools make the product exceptionally fast and easy to use, even for complex sheet‑metal tasks.
Accurate flat pattern generation: It delivers precise flat pattern outputs that ensure manufacturability and reduce errors during fabrication.
Techniques for non-linear and complex designs: Advanced modeling techniques support non‑linear, multi‑stage, and intricate sheet‑metal geometries without compromising accuracy or performance.

Key benefits of NX Sheet Metal

A complete set of tools
Familiar terminology and workflows.
Fast and easy to use for straight brake parts.
Design for fabrication within NX.
Accurate generation of flat pattern for downstream processes.
Advanced commands for non-linear and complex. designs typical to Automotive and Aerospace Industries.

Straight brake design

This sheet‑metal workflow supports a full range of design operations, including creating tabs, flanges, corners, punches, formed features, and flattening results. Tab tools now allow multi‑profile sketches, multi‑bend tabs, and targeting of secondary bodies for more complete designs in a single feature. Flange capabilities include multi‑instance creation along with extensive options for material inset, web length, and bend relief, with additional flange types such as Contour, Lofted, Hem, Jog, and Bridge. Corner and edge tools provide options to close corners with various shapes, apply taper transitions, and add chamfers or blends. Punch features enable the creation of complex deformation shapes typically produced by punch tools, as well as generating cutouts. All operations support straight‑brake design workflows and integrate with forming and flattening for a comprehensive sheet‑metal design experience.

Unbend and Rebend

Flatten and rebend selected areas of the part
Add additional curves to transformation

Resize

Adjust bend parameters for radius, angle and neutral factor

Flat Solid & Flat Pattern

Generate flat geometry
Control output, apply corner treatments and reorder bend sequence
Display Bend control lines
Retain feature parameters for holes
Create intermediate in-process states with multiple features
Feature properties and PMI reporting

Flat Pattern Export

Output flat pattern directly to file system or Teamcenter in DXF and Trumpf GEO formats
Fully configurable naming

PMI for sheet metal

PMI for sheet metal features
Bend

Radius
Angle
Neutral Factor

Body

Thickness
Material name
Physical material name

Fully integrated with

PMI preferences
Technical Data Package

Using foreign data

Convert to Sheet Metal
The Convert to Sheet Metal workflow provides a streamlined and highly flexible approach to turning solid models into fully functional sheet‑metal parts. It offers both a guided wizard for step‑by‑step assistance and a single‑click conversion option for rapid results. Users can clean up corners automatically, convert only selected local areas when needed, and maintain full control over all conversion parameters. The workflow is fully compatible with dedicated Sheet Metal Visual Reports, ensuring clear validation and analysis throughout the design process.

Sheet Metal from Solid
The Sheet Metal from Solid workflow provides precise control when converting solid bodies into manufacturable sheet‑metal parts. Designers can independently adjust bend parameters for each edge, ensuring accurate material behavior and forming requirements. Automatic overlap handling removes conflicting geometry, while corner‑cleaning tools generate smooth, fabrication‑ready transitions that support robust downstream features and operations.