[Goaliexam]

Does anyone have links to any good tutorials or books concerning working with curved surfaces in Inventor? Let me describe my issue, and maybe someone here can help:

Imagine a 1/4" or 1/8" thick rectangular piece of flexible aluminum (think flashing aluminum), with holes cut out of it in places, and several raised surfaces, and even whole protruded objects. We want this currently "flat" object to be the surface of a cylinder, which we would accomplish in "real life" by bending it around so that the two ends of the rectangle touch, creating a cylinder (without top and bottom surfaces).

I have been trying to model this in Inventor, and have had no success. The measurements and sizes of the cut outs and raised surfaces are extremely important, so extruding into a cylinder object using a tangent work space isn't really the best option.

Anyone have any suggestions for how I could accomplish this?