Hello, I am by no means a CAD expert, learning a bit more from my child who has multiple certifications while still in high school but she hasn’t been able to help me with what I am looking for since she doesn’t know Rhino. I see this thread and I am wondering if this could be something that would accomplish what I need. We create awnings, shade sails and more. Many of these things are not straight or flat and require taking a multi curved object and creating flat panels to be sewn together to create the structure. We have a program that does this but it costs more than Rhino does and the only thing we use it for is to take the surface we have created and flatten it down to a workable surface to create panels from. I see Rhino 8 has a flattensrf command, does that accomplish that? Can I export that flattened surface as a dxf file once I am finished cutting it in to panels? Or, does anyone know of another way to accomplish this? Even if it is with another program or addon? Thank you in advance to any input in this!
Hi Gerald -
I’ve moved your post into a new thread as it doesn’t have anything to do with the FlattenLayout command in the Rhino WIP.
From the help flie:
- The purpose of the FlattenSrf command is to draw a 2-D outline of a flattened view of a developable surface. This command cannot flatten all developable surfaces.
It sounds like you are dealing with surfaces that are not necessarily developable.
See this help topic for commands that are related to flattening surfaces: Flatten commands | Rhino 3-D modeling
Note that in the Rhino 9 WIP, there are more options for Squish:
-wim
What are you currently using? I do shade sails, boat covers and enclosure. I’m currently using ExactFlat for almost all of my work. Ive only used unrollsrf and squish for pretty simple covers.
currently using rhino5 and MPanel Pro. Looked in to exact flat and seems to be pretty costly for all i would use it for. I dont even use MPanel enough to justify the cost which is why i am trying to find a way to upgrade my Rhino, use it for way more than just shade sails, and not have to upgrade my MPanel. The MPanel version I have does not work with Rhino 8. I only use it to take a shade sail I have designed in rhino and flatten the material so I can split it in to panels and export it to my marking table. I will gladly take any inout I can get!
Admin, my apologies for putting this in the wrong place. Learning as I go.
Hi Gerald, do you have something that you can show to the public that shows what you need flattening? Upload it if you can, someone will surely see if they can help.—-Mark
Currently using MPanel. I just use it so little that the price is crazy for the 2 dozen times a year we use it. I would like to push our marine canvas and upholstery team to start utilizing technology we have at our disposal so it could become of more use in the future but who knows with them. Most of my shade sails I can do with out needing to flatten the sail digitally, but things like domed awnings and weird shaped awnings is where I utilize the flattening feature the most. Looks like Rhino is integrating the ability to flatten so hopefully its a moot point any way.
Still very new to this forum, just recently learned of it. Do I just literally upload the rhino file? Have the items boxed off or something in the file to show what I would be flattening? I can even flatten it with current used software to show how it comes out if that would help.
There is an upload button(5th button from the right at top of text box) or you can drag and drop ( the file) in the text box also . A screen shot of what you want flattened could work.—Mark