Hello everyone,
I’m working on a large ship model that will primarily be 3D printed. However, for finer details like railings, I plan to use photo etching to achieve a more realistic look.
I’ve encountered an issue when trying to prepare certain curved railings for the photo-etching process. Specifically, I need to flatten a curved 3D model into a 2D design so it can be properly etched and later physically curved into shape.
My initial approach was to use the Project tool to transfer the railing’s face onto a Sketch, but this only works on a given plane, resulting in a distorted, “squished” projection rather than a proper unrolled version that maintains its true dimensions.
My Questions:
Is there a way in Shapr3D to unwrap or flatten a curved object into 2D?
If not, does anyone have a workaround (either in Shapr3D or another tool) to accurately extract a true unwrappedversion of the railing?
I’ve attached a visual of the curved railing for reference:
Based on similar threads, this doesn’t seem to be a feature in Shapr. What third-party solutions should I explore? Any advice or workflow suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for your help!
Depending on how you Modelled the railings.
Shapr can give you the measurement of the length of the railing.
For any Spline or combination of lines selected, shapr will add the lengths together and display the total length.
This is true for edges of bodies too.
This is a good starting point, which would allow you to easily draw it as a flat.
Like you say there is no unwrap/flatten tool that will do that.
I made models of stadiums in the past, this kinda reminded me of ways to improve for next time. I had lot of issues with stadium posts that the shades sit on looking back I should have printed flat connected by rails. If it’s on rails posts could have been rolled out and glued on.
I modeled it this way because, I only need the face for testing.
The Unfold app did pretty good job as well but there are small gaps, those can be fixed with any vector app. I like this app because it’s more general purpose and cheap.
More than that this topic is asked at least few times a month and shows the real need for flattening tool within Shapr. Lot of people could benefit from it, from model makers to, home craft makers, origami makers. One person needed a cylinder flattened so he could print out in paper all the screw marks. Hopefully Shapr also see this and give use flatten feature after the Variable Parametrics. Shapr like to highlight Shapr is in between APP for Designers and Engineers. But I kinda think lot of users are also hobbyist with this app starting from iPad who’s audience are more design focused than engineering.
@SCALEMODEL THANK YOU so much for the thorough reply and app recommendation.
I’m still playing with Unfolder, but not having much luck just yet. I need to use it a bit more and perhaps try different variations of my model. Just the beginning though
ship model that will primarily be 3D printed. However, for finer details like railings, I plan to use photo etching to achieve a more realistic look.
I couldn’t agree more.