As the title suggests and hours of troubleshooting I am having issues getting the “Unroll Polysurface” parameter working in Grasshopper. It shows them squished and at weird angles instead of laying out straight.
I have a series of extruded rectangles that I am trying to use this parameter on. They are all rotated in the XY plan and in the ZY plane, could this be why there are issues? If that is the case that would mean I would have to orient each individual beam (there are 73) to be straight in both axis which is definitely not ideal. If that is the issue, does grasshopper have a way to orient several objects in such a way at the same time so I can get my unroll to work?
If @kip_jarrett wants a straight layout, he needs to adjust the rotation of the unroller results (or use source geometry made from boxes with 90-degree corners).
Thank you everyone for the insightful replies! It’s good to know that the unroller will work even when objects are rotated in model space. Like everyone said, it appears my extrusions are not coming across how I want in the script to where the source geometry has 90 degree corners.
Unfortunately, I am having a hard time trying to figure out how to fix this so I can get a proper unroll for CNC cutting. Here is part of my original script where I extruded my beams. If anyone wanted to take a look to help me extrude them properly I would greatly appreciate it!
The problem is caused by extruding with Z vector when your lines are not horizontal. That causes angled sides, resulting in angled beams when extruded again. Sorry I didn’t notice this the first time.
P.P.S. In top view, this method results in beams extending slightly beyond the trimming curve when they are not horizontal. That can’t be helped if you want square beams. If angled beams are OK, then it would be better to create them all the same size in the XY plane, then orient them to follow the lines and finally trim them.
Wow @Joseph_Oster thank you so much for this, exactly what I needed for my workaround!!
The added script at the end for the unroll is also very appreciated! I’m still very much learning Grasshopper and learning what components do what as I go. Could you briefly summarize what that part of the script (past the unroll) is doing? Upon baking the end it looks like it took a single beam and unrolled it, does adjusting certain parameters allow you to choose what beam is currently being unrolled at the end? (Just trying to better understand as I learn )
Are you referring to the ‘Tree/List Viewer’ tool? It’s a general purpose tool I wrote for examining data trees of geometry. In this case, when you move the ‘path idx’ slider you scroll through the branches that each show one unrolled beam, in yellow.
Oh yes, I see it now and how you have it connected to all 73 beams, and how the “path idx” slider is ordering them in order of height. Really cool stuff. Thank you!!
The ‘Tree/List Viewer’ doesn’t do anything (“ordering”) but traverse the data tree from Unroll by branch (path) and item. Since there is only one item (beam) in each branch, it appears as yellow. When there is more than one item in a branch, all but one are blue.
It’s a general purpose tool, not tailored in any way to this particular geometry.
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