I am very much new to Skeptchup and have been having some trial and error runs with it and followed a few tutorials to get the basics under my belt. I own a business and we manufacture pet products.
I am in the textile industry manufacturing pet bedding.
Ultimately i got Sketchup to draw products i manufacture / would like to manufacture in 3D to see how it will look then be able to break it up into pieces that are 2D that i can add things like lineup marks and sewing allowance to, then have it made into a template and produce them.
I have essentially drawn one product in 3D, then broken it up into the three pieces i need to make a template into but i am not sure how to “flatten” them into 2D so i can send a scale drawing to my graphics guy who can router cut my pattern.
I would greatly appreciate any assistance/pointers in doing this.
A lot depends on the shapes you are making. Some can be simple some difficult. Some require some lateral thinking.
There are a couple of flattening extensions. Unwrap and Flatten Flattery
are two that spring to mind, each has it’s foibles.
Showing us an image or model my lead to fuller answers.
Either will flatten that, but equally, selecting the full curve edge and reading the size of from Entity info would give you the length of the rectangle.
I had a go with the Unwrap unflatten and it worked, i just confirmed the measurement via the method you suggested and both came out the same. The 6 lineup marks didn’t carry through the the Unwrap unflatten though, do i need to make it all one piece before hand?
Thanks Box, I turned on hidden geometry and they don’t show, I thought I’d try unwrap if I grouped the lines with the object but it doesn’t work on grouped objects so not sure how else I can get them to carry over?
It’s not just getting the length, I need to flatten it to have it cut on a cnc router. There’s more complex than this but it is the most basic so something I thought I should learn first.
It is a very helpful suggestion for finding the length (no doubt something I would have been asking down the track).
I have some products with more pieces and more curves, the lineup marks are really important for putting the pieces together correctly. If they don’t carry across it isn’t always going to be as simple as redrawing them on as it may not be able to get piece A to line up correctly with piece B if that makes sense?
Draw those lines from the top to bottom to divide the faces into smaller faces or put the index marks on naturally occurring edges. You’ve surely seen by now that your 3D model is made of of a series of flat faces (turn on Hidden Geometry as Box had mentioned.) if you put your index marks on the common edge between a couple of faces, you should be able to identify them in the flattened pattern.
Quick example. I drew a couple of edges on the large flat face of the 3D shape which divides the face into smaller faces These then carry over to the flattened pattern.
