TT Toolbox Unfold Component

Comment

Comment by Ben Howes on April 29, 2014 at 10:38am

Taz, Pepakura still rocks - I have some students using it (for mesh unfolding) at Pratt, and the tabs are a great feature.

Dimitrios, great suggestion.  One feature that we might expose in our next release is the ability to explode all of the unrolled faces (instead of letting the unroller class determine which edges stay joined and which are cut) - this feature is already built in to the unroller class.  We'll certainly need to tackle edge and face numbering if we do so ... and as far as I know, the unroller class does not do that out of the box.  We'll have a look!

Comment by taz on April 28, 2014 at 12:35pm

Not to shill for other software, but Pepakura is also a great tool for unfolding complicated solids.  If I remember correctly it may also automatically create tabs at the seems.  It's been a while since I've used it.

Comment by Gregory Epps on April 28, 2014 at 6:20am

Hi Ben, this is a great component - I'm sure our users on www.curvedfolding.com would love it! Any chance you can post it there? Greg, RoboFold.

Comment by Dimitrios Papadopoulos on April 22, 2014 at 1:56pm

Very useful for folding model making.

Just a though in case it s an easy update: To number the original faces and the unrolled ones, so model-makers that cut the peaces know how to assemble them back. (when they are cut into individual components let s say from a laser cutter?)

Dimitris

Comment by Ben Howes on April 21, 2014 at 8:31am

Thank you Pieter -

The component will only attempt to unroll Breps.  No meshes - including stanford bunnies - allowed.  

About the seams - to be honest, we aren't sure how the splitting edges are chosen.  Our component is essentially a wrapper around the Unroller class in Rhinocommon, and there doesn't seem to be a way to specify which seams split and which stay joined.

Comment by Miguel Villegas on April 20, 2014 at 12:35pm

Beautiful! Just a few days ago I spent a gra$$load of time trying to get to how to reorient these planes.

Will try the plugin on the table very soon...

Comment by Pieter Segeren on April 18, 2014 at 4:32pm

That's really very very cool Ben.
I'm wondering if it can unfold the stanford bunny, for instance. What determins where the seams are going to go?