Sheet Metal Enhancement 1: Flat Pattern Punch Representation

You may now choose from different Flat pattern Punch Representation styles in Autodesk Inventor 2008. The options to choose from are: Formed Punch Feature, 2D sketch representation, 2D sketch rep and center mark, and center mark only.

I created a comparison of the flat pattern punch representation styles. My folded model has a round emboss on its face. Refer to the image below for the findings.

So what will be the benefit of this functionality?

If we have a lot of punched features in our model, we could just use the 2D sketch and center mark representation to our flat pattern. The outcome of using this particular style is less file size than that of the one using a formed punch feature representation.