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Old 05-16-2013, 12:56 AM
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imcold imcold is offline
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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?
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Old 05-16-2013, 06:20 AM
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Have it export line width and color as well. And for the file opening window, lock the filetype to .pdo, makes searching for models easier. As for the rest, it seems to work fine in Inkscape after you set line width and color. Better than the old export function anyway!
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Old 05-16-2013, 01:49 PM
Modeller Modeller is offline
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If you need stuff from Pepakura to move in Corel or elsewhere and be colored, export it in dxf and then just simply draw raw contoured forms, cubes, outlines etc. of the detail.
Or keep importing pdo files with separately unrolled details one by one in to the master PDO file.That would also prevent from teared apart surfaces of the 3D model (edges that can not be joined) if trying to bring it all at once in Pepa.

But I know and can say that working with dxf from Pepa in Corel can be, way much preferable then to use only Pepakura only for such like things.

And some comparison of the PDO tools in SVG and dxf with outlined method. Feel the difference and note the proportion distortions with SVG:
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Old 05-16-2013, 06:15 PM
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Quote:
Feel the difference and note the proportion distortions with SVG:
But how do you know which part is the correct size?
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PDO tools and format discussion-ouch.jpg  
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Old 05-16-2013, 11:02 PM
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Legion: line width and color must be set for the whole path, so if there's a single line of different color, I'd have to break the path apart. I'll most probably create a separate layer for this, because it can generate a lot of lines potentially.

Modeller: In the comparison pic, the scale of the objects is different, that's no distortion. I'm more interested in why there are segments missing. Do you have a sample pdo file that shows this? And if you want just the outlines in the svg export, select path group, ungroup paths and merge them together (Inkscape: select group, ctrl+shift+g to break group, ctrl+k to merge paths. Can be done for the whole drawing at once).
I don't know what you mean by "teared apart surfaces of the 3D model", and what's the relevance of it to the tool.
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Old 05-17-2013, 04:58 AM
Modeller Modeller is offline
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imcold concerning the teared apart edges. Check this out: 3ds sample file

Here is what hap with lots of messy/many polygons model in pepa all at once. You've got to see that edges can not be joined somewhere, due to that. What else?
PDO tools and format discussion-1.jpg

All the same, but imported from Max by one detail/just few.
PDO tools and format discussion-2.jpg

And, what about SVG,---.zip n.p. check it. But not sure that Corel can get rid of that wires.

Seems to be that the prog is pretty raw yet.

Distortion or wrong scale, whatever. Imported dxf is ok, 'couse, checked that with 10x10mm dxf cubes before )
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Last edited by Modeller; 05-17-2013 at 05:35 AM.
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Old 05-17-2013, 11:03 AM
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I see. Indeed it's better to unfold them separately, that many polys cause Pepakura to go haywire.
Thanks for the sample! I'll look into fixing the missing triangles. I could export just the outlines, but it's way easier to merge the paths in Inkscape, so it's not a priority for me now.
The part is 46,7x50,8mm in svg and it matches what I got from measurement in Designer and in pdf. If Corel scales the svg somehow, then I'm sorry, there isn't anything I could do about it.

The tool is raw. And by getting support and requests, I can make it better and hopefully helpful to spare people's time. So thank you for comments.
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Old 05-17-2013, 11:27 AM
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Anyway making of such a tool is cool by itself. Strange that pepa has a bit shitty vector export, but I hope you are on the way to fix it imcold Good luck with it.
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Old 05-17-2013, 04:04 PM
codex34 codex34 is offline
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Modeller, the 'error' is (and always is with 3D) small triangles, see images attached.
Metasequoia states the file is maximum ~8 units in length, so the smaller part is, in number terms, very small, and the small triangles are very very small, in computer number terms.
Basically pepakura is stripping out the small triangles, it probably told you some triangles were deleted so it could cope.
A x10 or x100 unit conversion would probably fix such problems, on export, because pepakura import isn't very good.
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PDO tools and format discussion-error1.jpg   PDO tools and format discussion-error2.jpg  
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Old 05-19-2013, 03:23 PM
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New version is up. Notable addition is OBJ export with materials and textures. You'll need the password for editing, if you're trying to export from a locked file. This is technically not necessary, but I decided to honor the editing lock: the data from PDO could be extracted even without a password.
Another potentially useful addition are Linux builds. This allows you to take a look at the data from PDOs even if you aren't using Windows.
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