Flatten double curved surface - command?

[davidcockey]

From the information page about Squish when it was introduced several years ago: Advanced Flattening [McNeel Wiki]

• Smash - is a special version of UnRollSrf that does not check to see if the surface is developable. It is not recommended now that Squish is available.

• Squish new - makes a flat pattern from a 3D non-developable (curved in two directions) surface or polygon mesh. In general, try UnRollSrf first.

Pascal commented in an earlier thread about the difference between Smash and Squish: UnrollSrf UnrollUV UnrolSrfOld Smash SmashOld (FlowAlongSrf)

@pascal

How do Smash and SmashOld relate to this?

Smash is the liberal version of UnrollSrf - it does not care if the surface is developable, it will make something regardless.

And what about Squish?

Different thing - it is designed to unroll somewhat double curved surfaces - like steel plates for a ship hull for example. It has some settings for taking into account stretch and compression. It works off of the render mesh of the object (and works on meshes).

-Pascal

In addition to the material properties which Jeff mentioned, the fabrication method used to introduce compound curvature into the metal will affect the physical “flattened” shape which corresponds to the finished item.

If metal will the metal be locally stretched by hammering or rolling on an English wheel? Or will the metal be locally shrunken? Or a combination of the two? Or will the metal be bent over a series of frames without any direct control of the deformation?