View Single Post
 
Old 05-16-2013, 12:56 AM
imcold's Avatar
imcold imcold is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Slovakia
Posts: 541
Total Downloaded: 0
PDO tools and format discussion

I made a simple tool for extracting the 2d pattern from PDO files and storing it into a SVG file. Then you can use a vector editor like Inkscape to "paint" the pattern, modify layout, remove useless parts, etc.

Advantages compared to Pepakura Designer's vector export:
- Designer doesn't support svg and you're lucky if you manage to open the other formats in Inkscape (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't)
- Designer's export saves each line as an individual path, which is pain to edit in a vector editor: you'll get hundreds, if not thousands of objects. Pdo tool exports the lines grouped into triangles or quads as they are on the 3D model, each group is a svg path, which are then fruther grouped together, if they belong to the same piece.

Disadvantages:
- doesn't export tabs yet
- doesn't work with old 1.x version format

Download: PDO tools

Usage:
- browse for a PDO file (don't spell that sentence out loudly)
- click Save SVG

Issues:
If it throws a Reading Error on you, then there's something wrong with the pdo or the program. Tamasoft doesn't provide the format specification, so the pdo reading is made by educated guess. Post the error and the pdo so I can do something with it.

What's next:
- linux version really soon. Like tomorrow.
- OBJ export with materials and textures
- textures in svg

Any feature requests, ideas?
Reply With Quote