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Old 03-30-2018, 12:46 PM
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Knife Knife is offline
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You need to do two things to flatten a 3D model to a sheet of paper. First, unfold it. This takes all the joined triangles and breaks them apart on two of the three sides to make a flat two dimensional object. I use “unfold” in Sketchup to do this. You click on one triangle to select it. Then click on any adjoining triangle and the fist triangle will rotate into the same plane along the connecting side. You can now delete the fold line between the two triangles to make a single object. Select this object and then unfold it with another adjoining triangle and erase the old line between the two. Continue the process until you end up with the finished part.

Second step is to rotate all the various parts into a common flat plane for transfer to the flat sheet of paper. I use a plug in called flattery” to accomplish this task. You select the part and then the plane you want it located on. The program will rotate the part parallel with the plane. From there you project the part down onto the plane. This step will highlight any pieces that are not completely flat after unfolding.

Here is a link from this site with links to flattery.

SketchUp free plugin Flattery for papercrafts

And here is a lot of information on unfolding.

Google SketchUp to make airplanes - Unfold Tool
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Old 03-31-2018, 10:55 AM
sprogs sprogs is offline
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Thanks Knife, ands thanks to all of you who've helped.
I'll give it a go and get back to you when I'm completely confused.
Liz
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