New Feature in MeshMixer 3 = flatten and unwrap 3D model for laser cutting and CNC

“will unwrap and flatten your model on a flat plane. This is particularly useful for fabrication methods such as laser cutting and CNC”

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ah so theyre stepping into the pepakura realm! thing are about to get interesting =)

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I’m not sure Pepakura has too much to worry about. I was playing around with this earlier today, and it doesn’t do what I expected. I imagined something similar to Pepakura. But MeshMixer can’t even flatten/unwrap a simple cube.

It really only works well when face groups are defined, as shown in the video. And those groups will be separated and flattened, not joined in any way. There are two options for the projection to the plane, Rigid and Conformal. But neither setting creates a cutable shape that can be folded to recreate the original 3D shape.

You can carefully select groups by hand and successfully flatten some things. For instance, I was able to flatten the cube correctly by selecting two groups, one that included the top and two opposite sides and the other with the bottom and the remaining sides. It flattened it into two straight strips. :unamused: But selecting groups of three sides that shared a common corner of the cube resulted in a projection similar to unwrapping a 3D model for texturing. Since there is no way to specify cut lines, I don’t see any way to flatten complex models the way Pepakura does.

I was really hoping this new function would be something like Pepakura. I can see it being useful. But unless I’m missing something, I don’t see this as much competition.

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That’s too bad. I didn’t have time to test it but I heard the same feedback later on from someone on FB. Hopefully they improve functionality asap.