From a 3d tubes sculpture to a 2d drawing for manufacturing?

I am kind new in rhino 3d and i have follow problem. As you see in the attached rhino file its a sculture that i would like to create a 2d drawing for the construction of it. It will be welded in aluminium. So what i would like is to have it exploded in 2D
(kind Autocad) and from there get the dimensions or / and “cut it” in smaller parts.
I have try with make2d but was not sucesfull.
Any tips or workflows how i do it?

thanks in advance
LambisVig.3dm (9.9 MB)

Hello - I do not see how to do this in any very systematic way - your tubing sections and input lines are separate objects so you’ll need to keep track of them somehow so you know in what order to stick them back together - it looks like a lot of work, naming or labeling or adding user text information or, possibly, a script might help.

-Pascal

Maybe @Rhino_Bulgaria has some insights into methodology from his work on automobile spaceframes?

[Edit: I cannot believe that I just used the word methodology in its populist and wholly incorrect meaning - I have truly gone over to the dark side.]

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That frame is quite complex, so it will be difficult to translate it into the real life form without some deviation. I guess that the horizontal surfaces must have a certain thickness, so the main focus should be to make them as thick as the actual material (aluminum plates?) that will be used to build them. Then, it would be nice if you add some sort of guide holes to them to know where to weld each of the aluminum pipes. You can use the plates or curve intersections to split the pipes in a way to make them flush to the horizontal surface of each plate.

The pipes could be unrolled via the “Unroll” command to make 2d patterns for laser cutting or to print paper patterns that you can wrap around the aluminum pipes an then cut them along the border of the paper.
Or, if you don’t have an access to a CNC pipe cutting machine or prefer to not use paper patterns, you can simply measure the length of each pipe or the original line used to build the pipe, then cut the actual aluminum pipe with some tool at an approximate angle.

There are two main ways to make the guide holes, and both have their pros and cons:

  1. A complex hole made by combining the intersections of the upper and lower pipes with the plate. The benefit of that approach is that it will let you preserve the smooth visual flow from pipe to pipe, but at the added cost of having to fill the excess holes with extra welds. To reduce the amount of welding, you can minimize the size of the guide hole, or you can use two small guide holes instead of a single large combined hole.

  2. A simple common ellipse hole to be used as a guide for both, the upper and lower pipes. That would require far less welding, but will also result into some uneven distribution of the pipes and they will look a bit off when welded to the same place at either side of the plate.

I showed both of these in this quick video that I recorded for you:

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Thank you so!!! This was exactly what I needed. I have used the first way combining the intersections of the upper and lower pipes with the plates. This help as you told me for less and even more easy welding but also give a lot off freedom.
If I may ask is there a way to prepare all those plates for laser cutting? I mean to can “lay” those flat down?

Again thank you so much for all the help and support it was exactly what I needed.

Lambis

Thank you so!!! This was exactly what I needed. I have used the first way combining the intersections of the upper and lower pipes with the plates. This help as you told me for less and even more easy welding but also give a lot off freedom.
If I may ask is there a way to prepare all those plates for laser cutting? I mean to can “lay” those flat down?

Again thank you so much for all the help and support
Lambis

When I design my metal plates in the 3d space, usually I set a CPlane to each plate so that I can have a better control over its shape. I use curves that then I extrude along the Z-axis of the CPlane to the desired thickness. Then, I simply use the ! _Orient3Pt command with the “Copy=Yes” option to orient a copy of the curves to the center of the world coordinates. The latter lets me place a specific name with my custom font and then export each set of curves for laser cutting as an individual DWG file.

Another, even faster way, is to simply extract the main flat surface of the plate with the ! _ExtractSrf command with the “Copy=Yes” option, then apply the ! _UnrollSrf command on the copied surface. That will place a new copy of that surface on the center of the world coordinate grid. Then, you can use the ! _DupBorder command to extract the curves along its border and export them with the ! _SaveAs command.
Note that if you apply the ! _UnrollSrf command on the whole polysurface, Rhino will unwrap each individual surface separate and will place them all in a series of flat surfaces laying on the ground.

Do you know who’s going to be welding this? You need to talk to THEM about how this can be completely redesigned to be feasible to build and what they want for CAD for it–probably not much really, big shops have their own people responsible for translating the 3D of what you want into what they need for their standards–you are presently lost in the weeds. No one is going to weld together a zillion tiny aluminum pipes, it will have to be converted to a series of bends…and that’s just the start, you need to get off the Internet and talk to the actual people who will be building it!

Using this kind of free-form “Nissin” pipe bending machine gives you a nearly limitless possibilities for the shape. :slight_smile:

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Sure there are lots of possibilities, but this has obviously been designed with zero consideration for how it will be made, and this thread has been a waste of time, we don’t know how it’s actually going to be made and therefore what is needed.

This is a chaotic project but at least there is finally some clarifications from the artist and the building company. The sculpture will finally be made from steelplates and the pipes will be not as many as in the 3d construction but grouped in the different thickness and bend to shape
There is a 1:1 gips model that will help with the construction. Bobbys help was worth off guld. Now is just lasercut the plates that stabilising the form. Pipes will be welding and bend to the approximate angle. The holes will be near the edge off the plates as they will be used to support.

If i may ask someting. if you have a non planar surface and a curve and you like to create a circle/Hole on the interesection Surface/curve (use it as center of the circle
)how you do to get the circle laying on the surface?

Again thanks for the help and sorry to waisting your time, was not my intension but on the end i have learn a lot from your help.