For those of you making fabric things with CAD, another cool addition to OnShape is the ability to take a 3D model and turn it into cut patterns (the example is a hot air balloon in the post) via the ExactFlat plugin:
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That is way cool and interesting. My previous employment was a fabric structure manufacturer and I did this patterning process manually. It’s interesting because you don’t always end up with a result that looks like what you thought you would end up with!
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I saw this in the OnShape newsletter and thought it would be cool. Free App that after 30 days requires subscription or loses facility for saving the resulting 2d image. It prepares a DFX, which for me complicates it a bit because I have struggled with conversions. Something to test out though especially since you can pay as you need it for downloads of individual projects. Perfect for helmet and body armor builds!
I wonder how similar this is to Pepakura? It also does models to unfolded flat paper shapes. Very popular with the cosplay and costuming community for making foam armor and other things. Not quite the same obviously because it’s meant to be made as a paper model folded back together.
that’s closer to the sheet metal system in OnShape. This takes organic shapes (like a spinnaker) and turns i into a flat cut set that is optimized.
This is still making surfaces only though, right? It makes 2d patterns of a 3d surface, ignoring any internal composition. An essential tool regardless, thanks for the share.