Hello!
I am trying to approximate the flattened/ unrolled surface for this geometry, so that I can laser cut it from a sheet of paper and then bend it. I tried Squish, but that did not preserve length at all. I also tried to convert it to NURBS and then use Smash, but I got thousands of little surfaces since it was converted to a polysurface.
Any help or redirection is greatly appreciated!
Thank you very much in advance and happy modeling!
unrollsurface_help.3dm (1.1 MB)
Hi,
The shape has compound curvature and hence cannot be flattened precisely. More importantly, the shape cannot be fabricated from a single sheet of paper without creasing.
To illustrate what I mean by compound curvature, cut a rectangle of paper and try to bend it into your shape. You’ll see that it will require creases and darts.
Also your mesh holes are pretty rough. I’d suggest re-modelling it as a nurbs srf (a 2 rail sweep should do it) and then cutting your holes. From there you need to split the srf into logical panels that can then be squished or smashed ready for cutting and fabrication.
Hope that helps, Steve
Hi Steve,
Thank you so much for taking the time. I totally understand what you are saying. Was trying to get a very quick and dirty prototype, but I will have to remodel it cleaner. Thank you also for the suggestions on how to remodel 
i imagine using cloth simulation might do to lay it flat, probably kangaroo and most certainly something like blender c4d etc.
also wip v9 has a better unroll command which is in development might try that
Thanks for the help everyone!
In the end, I managed to get a quick prototype by modeling a similar surface with Sweep 2, duplicating the borders of the geometry to get some curves, and then using CreateUVCurves to flatten these out by referencing the new surface.
Couldn’t have done it without your redirection! Thanks a ton!
Do you mean the revisions to the Squish command in the the WIP?
i guess so, excuse my terminology. i did not try anything yet so thats just a blind date suggestion 
