Unroll Surface and Breps

The Unroller script has been reworked from scratch. And is a lot more reliable with Brep input. As well the placement of the unrolled surfaces works a lot better now.

The script has turned into a userobject. You need to place the .ghuser file in the UserObject folder of Grasshopper (File - Special Folders - User Object Folder). Thats all, after drop you can use it without a restart of GH or Rhino.

Contact me if you have some question or for bug reports.

Enjoy!

Attachments:

Unroll.ghuser, 23 KB
Unroll_example.gh, 161 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by carol shea on May 15, 2013 at 11:20am

dear florian

thanks for this great definition which has helped me greatly...

however, i have difficulty achieving something with it .... i would like to unroll afew brep surfaces, each with a few curves on it.... eg surface one should have 3 curves, surface 2 should have 5 etc

however when unrolled the result only gives one curve with each unrolled surface (see attachments) where have i gone wrong? could you help me?

also maybe to have a Boolean to allow the definition to run or not so it doesn't start running before we input all the surfaces/curves/points?

thanks

Attachments:

grasshopper unroll blickfeld7.pdf, 356 KB
grasshopper unroll blickfeld7 image2.pdf, 117 KB

Permalink Reply by Patrick Beseda on June 26, 2013 at 11:37am

This is a fantastic tool and I've got it working great. Is there a way to set the explode option? I'm working with developable polysurfaces that I'd like to laser cut and fold back up. It would be killer if I didn't have to glue each facet back together. Any advice?

Permalink Reply by Jiangmei Wu on June 27, 2014 at 9:09pm

Hi Patrick,

I'm trying to do the same thing. Did you find a solution for it? I have tried using Python to unroll and set the explode to false. But for some reason it doesn't like my joined Brep list. I have been banging my head for a week now and still can't figure it out. THank you for any help you can provide.

Permalink Reply by Thomas J. Mrokon on August 22, 2013 at 8:42am

Hi Florian,

I just ran into the problem that your unroller produces other results than manually unrolling a surface in rhino. Somehow the wireframes curve lengths of the original and the unrolled surface are different. Working in rhino produces the expected curve lengths.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help

Thomas

Attachments:

error-unroller.gh, 38 KB

Permalink Reply by Thomas J. Mrokon on August 22, 2013 at 8:56am

this one works for surfaces and polys but I also need to unroll curves and points....

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/unroll?xg_source=activity

Permalink Reply by paulcoudamy on October 9, 2013 at 3:06am

Thanks for this incredible tool, new fab projects are on the way.

Paul

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on November 25, 2013 at 5:31pm

Hi Florient,

Thank you very much for this tool. I am trying to unroll a brep but the tool explodes it into three breps. Is there a way to prevent the explosion?

Please see file attached.

Best,

Arthur

Attachments:

Question.gh, 219 KB

Permalink Reply by Florian Frank on November 26, 2013 at 5:32am

Hi Arthuro ;-)

It's not the tool, that explodes it into three breps. It's rather the loft, that consists of many surfaces...The loft is a polysurfaces consisting of 64 surfaces. I've added a frame (3d rectangle) to the f input, so it lays out the unrolled pieces in equal distances, instead of just placing them in the world origin point 0,0,0.

(attached the definition from which i took the screenshot) try to create a different surface than the loft perhaps.

best regards,

Attachments:

Question.gh, 181 KB

Permalink Reply by Tom on November 27, 2013 at 3:51pm

Hi Florian,

Thanks for an amazing tool!

I am trying to unroll an orthogonal polysurface. However the unrolled objects are not in the same order as the original surface.

Is there a way of choosing the unroll order or labelling them?

This is going to be used to create an elevation of a building to lasercut card that has the windows taken out. So if it is in order then each of the elevations can just fit together!

Cheers

Tom

Attachments:

ortho_unroll.3dm, 183 KB
ortho_unroll.gh, 23 KB

Permalink Reply by Jiangmei Wu on June 27, 2014 at 9:03pm

Hello Florian,

Thank you for sharing. The component works nicely! however, I wonder if there is is a Boolean toggle allows one to keep the surfaces joined. I need to unroll 168 surfaces and each is made out of 8 joined surfaces. I want to have the surface joined when sending to a digital cutter as these surfaces will be folded rather than cut. Thank you very much for your kind advice. Jiangmei

Permalink Reply by Jiangmei Wu on June 27, 2014 at 10:02pm

Hi Florian again. I just figured out how to unroll and nest folded multiple surfaces without exploding them, using a different unroll component using Python -- after I had banged my head against it for a week, at lease. Thank you though. If you can add exploding toggles to your component, that will be great. I worked out a solution around it using lot of definitions.

Permalink Reply by Lukas Veltruský on November 26, 2014 at 12:24pm

Hi Jiangmei, before I bang my head... do you just have a hint for me? Did you stay within Python or could you manage to unroll Breps without exploding them in GH? Cheers, L.