I have this shape that I need the physical pattern of, does anyone know how i can unroll surface the actual curved pieces you can see?
Hi Emay - ‘unrolling’ doubly curved surfaces will not work with UnrollSrf . You can try Squish but keep in mind that patterns may or may not be reliable depending on the material that will be used in the physical part. In general there is no single ‘accurate’ flat shape from doubly curved surfaces as there is for single curved ones, (e.g.shapes that could be made from paper for instance.)
-Pascal
What can i do, to overcome this?
Apart from moving to another dimension with curved space?
The best thing to do is think of each panel as a piece of paper and imagine how that will behave if bent into the shape. Reduce the size of the panels until you achieve an acceptable compromise. You can rebuild the srfs to degree 1 in one direction to see how it looks and then unroll these flat panels. This is what clothing designers, shipbuilders and inflatable makers do every day. There is no perfect solution.
Regards, Steve
I don’t understand what you mean, can you show an example?
Here’s a couple of examples.
Sails are a case where a curved shape needs to be made very accurately out of stable flat fabrics. Any errors in the unrolling/flattening process are unacceptable and so all panels MUST be developable surfaces.
In the case of the sphere you can see how it approximates the shape. More panels will give a closer approximation at the expense of greater fabrication complexity. It depends on the materials you are useing and the fabrication process that will determine what level of complexity you need…
How you produce these panels is up to you - there are a million ways to skin that cat. Do a search for developable surfaces and you will be on your way.
Steve
