Hi everyone,
I’m currently working on a project where I need to build full-scale replicas of a Cybertruck for a festival here in Germany. I’m modeling everything in Rhino, and later it will be CNC-cut from sheet materials and assembled on site like a big folded structure.
I found a fairly simple 3D model online, but it’s not ideal for my needs: the surfaces are warped and not truly planar. Since I need clean, flat Polysurfaces for CNC fabrication, I’m currently “redrawing” the whole model manually.
Here’s my current (but a bit tedious) workflow:
- I trace curves along the model.
- Since the curves often end up slightly warped (not lying on a flat plane), I manually rotate the curves using 3D Rotate to roughly align them horizontally.
- Then I use Gumball to manually set all points to the same Z-level (zero out the Z-coordinates).
- After that, I move the flattened curves back into their original position using Orient > Orient on Plane (or Orient 3 Points, depending).
- Sometimes I need to tweak the placement manually afterward.
It works, but honestly, it feels clunky and time-consuming.
I’m wondering:
- Is there a better, more elegant workflow to quickly flatten curves or surfaces while keeping their original proportions and general location?
- Maybe something involving setting a custom Construction Plane (CPlane) based on three points and drawing directly there?
- Or any better strategies for handling warped models that need to become flat, manufacturable surfaces?
I would love to hear how others would approach this.
Any suggestions, tips, or tool/plugin recommendations would be super appreciated!
Thanks a lot in advance!
Leonard
