Hello,
I am working on a large stainless-steel sculpture made from hundreds of individual sheet-metal panels. I have attached a video showing my current workflow in Rhino 8.
The model is already separated into layers and colours according to the different panels and fabrication requirements. Some panels are flat, while others consist of 2 or 3 connected faces that will later be folded on a press brake.
For each folded panel, my current workflow is roughly:
- Join the connected surfaces.
- Unroll / develop the panel.
- Check carefully that Rhino has not mirrored or flipped the developed part.
- Move the flattened panel into my fabrication layout.
- Duplicate the outer border for the laser-cut DXF.
- Duplicate the internal fold edges.
- Keep a copy of the original 3D panel.
- Measure and annotate the fold angle.
- Indicate whether each fold is UP or DOWN.
- Create a reduced/clear reference drawing so the laser and press-brake operators can understand the part correctly.
- Organise and identify every panel individually.
Precision is critical. These parts must correspond exactly to the 3D sculpture and to each neighbouring panel. I cannot accept an approximate workflow; geometry, fold lines, orientation and dimensions need to remain accurate to the millimetre.
Another issue is that, after unrolling, some panels occasionally appear mirrored, so I have to manually verify their orientation against the original 3D geometry.
In other areas of the sculpture I have four-sided surfaces created with Loft. If a surface has too much twist and Rhino cannot unroll it within the required tolerance, I divide the quadrilateral into two triangular surfaces and develop those separately.
The main problem is the amount of manual work. The head alone contains roughly 100 panels, and there will be many more on the body. I have already spent two days working around 16 hours per day and have prepared only about 80 panels.
Is there a more efficient Rhino workflow for processing many panels at once while maintaining this level of accuracy?
Ideally I would like to automate or batch as much as possible, for example:
- unrolling multiple independent panels;
- retaining the relationship between each flattened panel and its original 3D panel;
- automatically generating outer cutting contours;
- automatically extracting fold lines;
- identifying whether folds are UP or DOWN;
- adding or calculating bend angles;
- automatically naming/numbering panels;
- detecting mirrored/flipped unrolled parts;
- laying the resulting parts out systematically for DXF export.
Would Grasshopper, RhinoPython, a Rhino command workflow, or a specialised plug-in be the appropriate solution?
I am not looking to simplify the geometry or approximate the sculpture. The priority is maximum fabrication accuracy with a much faster repetitive workflow.
The attached video shows exactly what I am currently doing manually.
Thank you very much for any guidance
