How can you unwrap a mesh or solid?

[VTPro]

Is there a way to unwrap a mesh or solid so that you have a resulting flat surface? I would like to be able to intersect items.... say cylinders, be able to trim them to each other, and then unwrap them to a flat surface. This would allow me to print cutting templates of the intersecting shapes.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Not in bare AutoCAD.

Rhinoceros can do what you want (to surfaces) and write the result to an AutoCAD file, which you can plot to make a template. At least with Rhino 1.1, you have to dimension one feature in Rhino so that AutoCAD doesn't open the dwg file at some odd scale.

There's surely a way, but I could never get a decent plot out of Rhino. So I used both.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[VTPro]

Thanks, Mike. I'll be looking into Rhino 1.1, then.

 

[MikeHalloran]

I think Rhino may be up to version 4 now. I have version 3, but I like 1.1 better.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[SugarRat]

Sounds like what you are doing is similar to sheetmetal development. There are numerous packages that sits on top of Autocad that you can try, the best one I found is Striker. It will do development for you as well as nesting.

Hope it helps.

Kobus