Accurately Flattening a Surface (ProjectToCPlane)?

Rhino
1

Dear all,

I need to flatten surfaces so that I can cut an accurate mask for spray painting.

Will ‘ProjectToCPlane’ do he trick?

Does it create a highly accurate flattened example of a particular surface in 2D, so I can then cut the flat shape out on masking material and stick it over the area to be masked?

Any other options or workarounds you can think of?

Thank you!

2

Unroll is the command you are looking for.

Cheers

DK

3

That depends on the surface…

4

Imagine holding a complex shape above the floor and shining a light down onto the object and getting a shadow on the floor. The shadow is like projecting something in Rhino. The projected shape is not a flattened version of your object, it’s just a shadow / projection.

5

Don’t use “ProjectToCPlane” on surfaces, it can fold them over funny, just use Make2D.

6

Thank you all for the advice!

7

if you are dealing with doubly curved surfaces you have to use smash or squish, unroll mostly works for single curved surfaces unless you fool around with the tolerance setting to extreme extents.

if you have access to the new WIP you may try the new squish tools, they are supposedly more accurate but work with mesh only (for now i hope and guess), so you would have to convert the surface first