ArcherShadow said:
I like to start somewhere in the middle (preferably the top) and work my way out in all directions equally - helps me with keeping things symmetrical. Anything else and I find the sides are less even.
My two cents.. This also works for me in other fabrication projects, especially welding. Starting at the bottom is fine too.
Here's why it's better.. you need to remember that we all make minor accuracy mistakes, in the "real world" it's called tolerance. Sometimes you might overbend, or underbend, a single part by a tiny little degree, which is fine by itself, but if you connect a bunch of those little tolerance errors together, they can add up to a huge mess.
Tolerance factors are when you say "Plus or minus 2 degrees".. it means that you're expecting every bend to be either correct, too tight, or too open, by a maximum of two degrees. At my work I sometimes have to hold a tolerance of plus zero, minus .03125 inches. That means I can be 1/32 of an inch too small, but can't be too big at all. If I have 32 panels in a row, and they're all 1/32" too wide, the whole thing would be an inch too long.
By working symmetrically, you can balance out the minor errors as you go, because everytime you connect something to mutiple places, you're kinda' realigning everything to work together. Then when you get to the end, you're not frustrated with trying to connect back to your starting place, and trying to balance everything in the final connections. You merely need to keep connecting to the stuff around it, which means you only worry about the overall tolerance factors at the end.
By working symmetrically a lot of your tolerance issues get absorbed, and now you'll just need to compare the overall height with what you expected to get.
