I mainly work with plate steel for welding and cnc plasma work. I use unrollsrf to extract the surfaces. I have a lot to learn but I have to start somewhere.
Here are the steps that I took to draw the object.
polygon
planarsrf
extrudesrf
unrollsrf
If I select poly surface, then it extracts 9 separate objects. (incorrect for what I need)
If I select surface then it extracts just one object (correct)
My question is…Is this the right way to do this? That is one plate of steel. Is there a way to combine ‘surface’ and ‘polysurface’ so that it is one without loosing the thickness of the object (1/2")
I just want it to unroll as one object. It wont ever be anything more then a single plate. When I am drawing I need the thickness to be there but when I go to unroll and cut it out I only need the one with the green arrow below. I just want to make sure this is the best way to do this in rhino (selecting ‘surface’ or if there was a more preferred way)
It is suppose to be a solid piece of sheet metal 1/2" thick but from this view it looks like it is a solid plane with a flange around the outside. How can I make this a solid piece?
which has thickness. I am struggling how to best handle this thickness in rhino. So when I draw a 3 dimensional object in rhino I need to account for this thickness so that the measurements come out correctly
So when I draw a box that thickness matters (please see the top view. not all sides are the same length)
I am new to rhino so I am trying to figure out the best way to handle this thickness while being able to extract that to a cutting program. (like rhinocam or enroute that will handle the cutting)
(in the picture above, there is only 4 sides, not 8 sides)
The end result is to get it to unroll to this. (Rhino unrollsrf will extract the sides and then I will import the dxf into this program)
I think you should look at the Level 1 and 2 Rhino training, as this is not what people are usually asking about when they talk about unrolling steel, they’re usually wondering how to unroll shapes with bends or a developable surface like a boat hull. This is…just basic 3D modeling. It seems a huge waste of time to actually model the plate thickness, I would just model one surface per plate–again people modeling sheet metal parts often make their surfaces represent the middle of the sheet, I don’t know if that makes sense for your situation or not–then it’s super-easy to trim and extend to account for thicknesses when you’re ready to flatten as it’s just surfaces instead of solids.
Thank you for the update.
Your explanation is perfectly clear and your question is to my humble opinion, interesting.
@pascal yes, it sounds like there is a need for a one step or simple procedure to lay out on the ground a set of faces contours ( at the edge of a nesting request ) …
With boats, we deal with this all the time. Generally we just model the surfaces on the moulded side of the plate and don’t bother thickening.
However, it would be amazing to model the solids and not have to deal with subsurface selection at the time of unrolling. So, I have had a thought that may achieve this. Assign a subsurface (or set) from the closed polysurface that would be the mould side to be unrolled during modelling. Ideally this would be the original surface that is thickened to create the solid. When it came time to unroll the part just pick the closed polysurface to unroll. Rhino then resorts to unrolling the subsurfaces that were previously assigned as the mould side. Maybe these mould surfaces could be coloured differently.
At least, be able to use UnrollSrf with more than one Srf would be a good progress.
This way the user could pick a set of surfaces on any PolySurf in one step …
For simple flat objects there are different ways to speed things up:
You can model without thickness and use Thickening render effect to display thickness.
You can also model with thickness, lay things flat by remapPlane and DupfaceBorder to generate the outlines for cnc.
You can make a grasshopper script that listens to your rhino file with a geometry pipeline and have the surfaces you draw thickened and lay flat automatically as you design.
