Minimum energy flattening of doubly curved surfaces or meshes?

[DanielPiker]

See the definitions in this thread:

Mapping onto Quads Meshes and Nurbs

Probably the simplest way, that would work for something like the example you showed, is to triangulate your curved mesh, apply Angle goals to each triangle (and no Length goal), and an OnPlane goal. If there aren’t too many undercuts this is sometimes all you need. For more complex shapes though, you might need to also temporarily apply other goals such as smoothing to help guide it into the plane without folding over itself