Sheet Metal Design

[baronep]

So, our team in the off season built a project that used custom laser-cut aluminum parts made out of 1/8" sheet. This thickness was good for our design in which we required extra-rigidity and we had no weight requirements. My question is how does someone optimize weight and rigidity. How do you know in a CAD model if your sheetmetal part is going to fail or not (we use Solidworks) and what thickness of sheetmetal is typical on a 148 style robot?

Thanks

PB