Hi everyone
I am having a hard time figuring out how to flatten this mesh/surface. I tried exploding the mesh and smashing the surface, and also tried flatten.
Help please!
flatten.3dm (1.4 MB)
Hi Gabriela,
I’ll assume you are trying to flatten the outer surface (mesh) rather than the whole thickened piece.
For a start, the shape you are trying to flatten will not physically flatten without massive distortion and self intersection. Imagine trying to drape a piece of paper over that shape. It would crease all over the place.
You’ll have to break it up into a series of more sensible panels first. In the file you posted there are only meshes so use Squish to flatten the mesh. If you have the surfaces you created originally then you can try Smash.
Hope that helps, Steve
You could try other free programs to flatten your mesh such as http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/ or Autodesk 123D Make.
It won’t be the best net or developed surface but it looks like you’re making patterns for shoes, you’d be able to approximate it using these and then feed the info back into Rhino as a 2D net to tidy it up.
Hi Gabriela,
I had a quick go at making a surface from the mesh.
You can trace the outline of the mesh and join the lines, take sections of the mesh and project lines onto the surface to create the isocurves needed to recreate it, sweep, loft or curve network.
Have a go - Use rebuild curve to simplify the lines - I’ve used way too many points.
Depending how accurate you have to be that should be OK?
Good luck!
flatten2DCube.3dm (1.2 MB)