Eneroth Unroll Surface

I hope this is worthy as my 100th extension in the Extension Warehouse :partying_face:. It sure helps me a lot in my model making workflow.

Eneroth Unroll Surface does what the name suggests. It unrolls a surface onto a flat plane. It even handles extruded surfaces with some thickness to them. I used to procrastinate this step to the end when working on my laser cut card models as it was labor intensive and tedious. Now it’s done in a click!

16 Likes

It’s a fun coincidence that this is published on my cake day. 10 year anniversary since I joined this forum :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:

22 Likes

Hi @eneroth3,

Nice, useful and easy to use tool :clap:!

Just a little remark. If I close its toolbar it appear again when I close and restart SketchUp.
A little toolbar.restore wouldn’t be forgotten :wink: ?

Are you on Mac? On Windows .show honors the user setting. Maybe this is something we need to look into internally.

1 Like

Nice but, if I unroll a cylinder with a radius of 1000 mm, I get a circumference as follow:

  • By calculation = 2000 * pi = 6283,185307 mm

  • With SU Entity Info = 6283,185307 mm

  • By measuring the length of the unrolled cylinder = 6265,257227 mm

Yes, I’m on a Mac.

1 Like

Can you log this platform discrepancy in the API issue tracker?

1 Like

What happens if you right click the circle and explode it to edges and measure their lengths? The extension doesn’t know about the curve parameters, just the individual faces.

This is news to me! The docs have never said this.

#show shows, #hide hides, and #restore restores to the last state.

There have been bugs with #restore in past releases (but I thought these were fixed.)
Because of these bugs, I always do …

toolbar.get_last_state == TB_NEVER_SHOWN ? toolbar.show : toolbar.restore

… which (I think) has always worked (even in bugged releases.)
Ie, #restore is supposed to do this comparison internally, but was failing to show toolbars when there was no previous state (upon an extension’s first run.)

Code can also (more simply) do …

toolbar.show if toolbar.get_last_state != TB_HIDDEN

… which covers both the never shown and previously shown scenarios.

2 Likes

Hmm, is it really an issue ?

The documentation says :
The restore method is used to reposition the toolbar to its previous location and show if not hidden.

And I remember my first submission to EW where one of the tip written in the rejection reasons was using toolbar.restore instead of toolbar.show.
Have there been any changes in the behavior of these functions in recent years?

1 Like

I don’t think it is. I think it’s just accidental confounding of method purposes, … lack of coffee, etc.

1 Like

Exploding the curve and getting the total length gives the same result as with your plugin.

See this SU file.

Unrolling plugin question.skp (192.4 KB)

Hi @eneroth3 it’s very handy in some situations. It would be even cooler if we could roll it back to the first position after editing.

1 Like

To get a better result with your geometry you can increase the segmentation

What kind of editing are you thinking?

1 Like

At this moment I’m thinking walls in terrains that usually follow strange plot shapes.

This kind of walls need to be drawn in 2D in real size, for technical elevations of structural projects.

Your plugin is great for that. However, even in 2D, engineers will propose changes to geometry that might be worth getting back to 3D. Your plugin could send allow for that.

The thing is that this is also a great method editing to a lot of other stuff. Out of the top of my mind I can think of:

  • Streets
  • Ramps for wheelchairs
  • Façades
1 Like

Thanks JC, certainly will give it a try… I have been importing a lot of packing puzzles (for example)


3DW
into SketchUp that I laser cut and give away as presents (or freebies).
For the box I have to design finger joints (which is laborious) and if I understand this plugin correct it will save me a lot of grunt work.
Using finger joints, the model has to be re-customised every time I change the thickness of a box.