the files that you have to pass to the laser cut cnc you can get them also from a cad 2d, because the laser cuts a flat figure from a plate of sheet thickness constant, obviously flat.(there are that they also work on canned or tubes, called laser tubes, but let them miss to not complicate too much the picture). for this reason the path you have to pass to the cnc of the laser cut is purely two-dimensional.
but:
you don't have to make some flat pieces, but
pieces with folds. holes or windows are not a problem even in 2d, but think of folds.
you need to know exactly how the sheet behaves (what? I do not speak only of the thickness but also of its ductility/elasticity) during and after the bending, in order to be able to develop an object made by bending. think only of the holes, which are executed before the bending and after the bending they must be, e.g., aligned with those of the opposite face. establishing the position implies knowing exactly how the sheet will deform on the fold. this is only a very trivial example of the problems that must know who does the "sheet" (I call them so, but with much respect) .
so if you want to give your supplier the developments in plan of your pieces to cut and fold, you have to master these arguments and many others (if I make a hole too close to a fold, the fold will go looking for the hole, it doesn't bend where I hope... ). the most evolved cads have the modules for bending, which slowly return the developments of the pieces you have shaped in 3d, but it is not that if they see it alone, the upstream knowledge is however indispensable.
I, for example, send to my sheet metal solids 3d and then he "passes" them with his folding program and, if he has to make changes to make feasible (and stable after the fold) the caxxates I sent him, he calls me to tell me "
Look that you can't do that, that other one doesn't stand a squadron, here I still have to make you a chord like this etc. " then if he fixes them and I say thank you, because it is his job and I do not have the presumption (or the need) to learn it.
I do not want to discourage you, indeed I like your "knowledge" spirit, but find a second friend of the sheet metal, or prepare dozens of pieces to throw before making them come as you see them on screen.
x exxon
the quote of the "who has longer" perhaps refers to me, which I used in a discussion where dissent from the ways of those who were lighting it too much and I certainly did not refer to you. I did not speak at all about the lack of an analytical approach to design. I, on the contrary, if I were able to, would try to analyze every little thing of a project, find the laws that regulate the events that I want to get and apply to the various cases, in order to increase to the maximum possible capacity of prediction. both to limit errors and, above all, to the satisfaction of being able to tell myself "
I am what works exactly as I had thought and calculated and if I want to change this x data and I will get y on the other side"maybe I knew how to do it all the time, so figure out if I doubt the absolute value of study and knowledge. I consider myself an obtorted practical neck, forced to be by my ignorance.
I apologize with the oct and with the others for this divagation, but if I can help to keep calm exxon, which today has woken up wrong, I sacrifice myself in favor of the community!
exxon joke, now you know how much I respect you, even when you polemizzi.
There are also specific tutorials for using all freecad modules.
