Flattery unfolding video for Mchale

[mldixon]

Mike or Mchale is having a hard time of it with flattery plugin for sketchup. He also tried out waybe which refused to unfold his models, and reported back that there were hidden lines and faces that stopped the unfold. You have to have clean geometry to use these plugins. I showed Mike the manual method of unfolding so he could get a grasp of what the ruby scripts are trying to do. The manual method allows a lot more to be unfolded for instance bad geometry ans stray lines. However I installed the latest version of flattery and found it to be much improved from the last time I used it. It just ignores the bad geometry and unfolds the faces, when you watch this short video it will show the flattery tool unfolding Mikes model. It groups the faces and as long as you reference the same surface when unfolding it lays it flat. I click on empty space with the cursor to deselect before starting a new group. You will notice that it will continue to unfold on the same plane as long as you pick the top of the car as your reference. At the end you will see all the geometry that is getting in the way of the unfold programs. I just delete this and then use the unfolded model as canvas to add details and textures in. Use any graphic program you want to do this. I use illustrator, but any program works. Hope this helps Mike (Mchale) No magic, just tools and good techniques will get you where you are trying to go. All software has a steep learning curve so find something you like and dedicate yourself to mastering it. I will try to post some more tips for you as time allows.

Here the short video. Make if full screen (double click on video, should take you to youtube page and then lower right corner to make full screen) to see it better.

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[mchale]

just got an email from youtube that you ekimnoxid01 had shared this video with me i watched the video thanks that explained what went wrong once again thank you

[spaceagent-9]

i am just checking on this because i am begining to use sketch up too, i havent had much time this week to study the videos, but i did find out one thing.
if you make a piece in gsu, and then get familier with it thru repeated drawings. you can make a drawing of the peice in a form that is drawn unfolded, and then just save it as a 2-d object onto your desktop, and then print and cut out the peice. i know its not theusual way, but you can get a model out of it. drawing piece by peice, and then drawing the unfolded peice and printing it out to cut.
for those of you that cannot get the @#$%$^%^*^& thing to unfold like me.

[spaceagent-9]

i forgot to add, to use the top down view, or roof top icon when you save the peice to print.
jim

[doctormax]

nice video. i gave it a thumb up ;) it in fact was well done and thats how its done. one question say you got something a colour in sketch up and you then decide no hate that colour is there a way to change it. mine for some reason just gave me a choice of turn it to look like marble. i suppose the real problem do comes when you got a a lot of curves in the sketch up 3d drawing like i do in mine. which is waiting for me to get to learn how to do them. so have you any plan to do a video of how to use flattery with a 3d with a few curves to give an idea what to do because that be great.

[mldixon]

nice video. i gave it a thumb up ;) it in fact was well done and thats how its done. one question say you got something a colour in sketch up and you then decide no hate that colour is there a way to change it. mine for some reason just gave me a choice of turn it to look like marble. i suppose the real problem do comes when you got a a lot of curves in the sketch up 3d drawing like i do in mine. which is waiting for me to get to learn how to do them. so have you any plan to do a video of how to use flattery with a 3d with a few curves to give an idea what to do because that be great.

Ok Doc.
This is a section of a fuselage of a model I am currently designing. It has curves in two sections around the perimeter. The formers are flat on one side and stepped with angles on the other side.

In the video I will show you how to get flattery to put all the unfolded parts on the same plane without having to struggle with rotation of parts.

All good models are made up of groups of parts. If you model everything in sketchup in one giant group don't expect the unfolding tools to help.

Hope this gets you further along on your journey. :)

As always double click on the youtube video and hit the expansion to full screen button in the lower right corner to see the details in the video.

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[NStarkel]

Is it hard to make models on that program?

[mldixon]

Is it hard to make models on that program?

I make all the models you see on my posts on this program. It is very intuitive and I consider it easy to use. However. you just need to put in the time, slogging through the mud of all the Ruby scripts to get the right tools to make it do what you want. There are a ton of sites that make this easier. I suggest you download the free version and play around with some simple forms. If you get to the point where you feel you have some real interest in it get the pro version and start exporting EPS views and 3d models to graphic programs and other programs like Pepakura. Then the power of the program will come to life for you.

I have Inventor, Autocadd, and Mechanical Desktop and I prefer the simplicity of Sketchup over these programs.

[Leif Ohlsson]

Now, that last video was really helpful, Mike! Does the export to .svg work for you in Flattery? - Leif

[mldixon]

No. I export from the top down view with the parts in scale as 2d graphics in. Eps format to adobe illustrator. But I did try the svg and it worked fine. Are you having problems with this? And I am not a Mac person although I have them around me.:)

[MattCiapa]

Hi
I found unfolding with a unfoldtool a bit time consuming, especially if you have a lots of subsurfaces to click. Also what I wanted to do is to be able to unroll panel lines that sit on a surface ( just like in rhinoceros).
So with a little help from guys @ Sketchucation forums, I wrote a script called Autounfold.
How it works You can see here:
clip0004 - YouTube (http://youtu.be/vAAt2Jb9P4Y)
I posted script at Sketchucations forums, so You can download it there (search for autounfold.rb)
or PM me . It is not working 100% perfect, so currently I am working on second version of it.
You can also take a look at my blog, some additional photos and info : SKETCHUP-PAPER-PLANES (http://sketchup-p-p.blogspot.com/)

Greetings from Holland
Matt

[mldixon]

Matt
Thanks for posting this link. I will be giving this a try. I hope your ruby works as good as the example. Your right about manual unfolds, you can get lost quick.

[mldixon]

Hi
I found unfolding with a unfoldtool a bit time consuming, especially if you have a lots of subsurfaces to click. Also what I wanted to do is to be able to unroll panel lines that sit on a surface ( just like in rhinoceros).
So with a little help from guys @ Sketchucation forums, I wrote a script called Autounfold.
How it works You can see here:
clip0004 - YouTube (http://youtu.be/vAAt2Jb9P4Y)
I posted script at Sketchucations forums, so You can download it there (search for autounfold.rb)
or PM me . It is not working 100% perfect, so currently I am working on second version of it.
You can also take a look at my blog, some additional photos and info : SKETCHUP-PAPER-PLANES (http://sketchup-p-p.blogspot.com/)

Greetings from Holland
Matt

Ok Matt I downloaded the RB from the forum and installed it. Opened Sketchup and it showed up. When I used it, it hung up on the second surface selection. it allowed me to select the first surface, but would not accept the second surface. I tried cubes rolled cones etc. but no joy. Have you developed another generation of this RB. I tired this in Pro 8, Pro 7 and Pro 6 and it failed to unfold in all versions. Any help would be appreciated.

[MattCiapa]

Hi ,
Well I can understand it, but i have no idea why it happens as I am not a programmer.
One thing that comes to mind is that it can happen if You click two coplanar faces or two that are almost coplanar.
Can You send me a sketchup file that crashes ? I will take a look at it.

For unrolling the cube... It is possiblle that it will fail.
Because it is possible to unroll 5 sides and then 6th will not be connected. And then loop inside ruby fails to finish. ( number of unrolled faces is still less than number of
For a cilinder (with attached bottom and top) the same situation is possible.

I will try to post soon a short tutorial about it.

Greets
Matt