Is there any way to “flatten” a 3D object? For instance, suppose I design a cardboard box. I want to be able to flatten out the box into its unfolded 2D shape, to create a cutting diagram. Or, I create a cone by extruding the center of a circle until I get a conical shape. Now I want to flatten out that 3D sahpe into a 2D flat rendering of what shape the flat material would need to be to form the cone. Clear as mud?
If your model isn’t too complex, you can do it by successive rotations along the fold lines, selecting all the faces ‘outside’ the line first, so they come along with the faces they are connected to.
I’m personally quite interested in this sort of feature, and I hope we’ll be able to build in an implementation for SketchUp Free eventually. I don’t have anything to announce today, of course, but would be keen to hear more about how you would use these features if we did build them in.