Creating a Gingerbread House Using Sheet Metal
Today we will be creating a Gingerbread House as a sheet metal part and applying textures.
- Starting with the base, sketch out a square or rectangle for the shape you want. Within the sheet metal tab, select Base Flange/Tab. We have extruded this based upon sheet metal parameters.
- Now we have the base, we can build up the sides. To do this, use an edge flange on all four edges. In this example we have extruded this to a distance of 380mm with material bend set to outside.
We have extended this past the final height as we will be bending the roof in from this extrude.
- To create the angled roof, we have used a sketched bend. First, we must create 2 separate sketches on either side of the house so we can create 2 separate sketched bends. The sketch is made up of a horizontal line from end to end that we have set 200mm from the base.
- Once the sketches are in place and fully defined, we can apply the sketched bend. For the roof we have applied a 45 degree angle to each side.
- Now that we have the roof of the house, we can cut down the sides to line them up. This can be done with convert entities and extrude cut, end condition – through all.
- Now that we have the basic shape of the house done, we can start to add in some detail. In this example we will add a door and window to the front and then add in some icing decoration. To create the window and door we have sketched them out on the front face of the house. You can take advantage of symmetric mates when drawing the window. Next extrude cut with a link to sheet metal thickness.
- Now that we have the cut out for the window and the door, we can re-add an opening door back in. This was completed with a sketched bend set at 30 degrees.
- Now that we have the structure completed, we can look to add in the final detail and finishes. To create the icing/piping effect we have used circular sweeps which follow a sketched path. You can see below this being applied to different areas of the house.
Note: Take advantage of mirror and linear patterns. A mirror has been used on the side walls, and a linear pattern on the roof which was then mirrored across. This saves lots of time!
- Your gingerbread house is complete! Now to add the finishing touches. We have used a medium gloss red, green and white for the detail with a custom gingerbread texture for the main body. You can now also see what the final flat patter looks like.
Note: To add custom textures/appearances, first create a folder which you plan to put the appearance into on windows file explorer (picture 13), save the image into this folder (the higher the resolution the better!) go back to SolidWorks and on the appearance tab on the right select ‘’add file location’’ (picture 14) ,browse to the folder you had just created.
Bonus: When rendering the finished product create a face/body inside the House and give it a lit LED appearance. You can see the difference below.
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