The Ship Model Forum

Hey All,

I am trying to create a mask for a ship. I have access to a vinyl plotter and want to be able to use that as a medium for the mask itself. What I am stuck on is the best way to create the outline for the plotter to cut. I want the drawing to be able to account for hull curvatures. I do have several photographs of the subject. Short of putting painters tape on the actual kit and trying to draw the camouflage measure on by hand then taking the tape off the model and scanning it in I can't think of a better way.

There has to be some way with technology currently available to create the image on the computer, flatten it from a 3D image to a printable 2D image, then print the bad boy out.

Thoughts?

Gabriel,

I have seen sheetmetal fabrication programs that will "unfold" 3D designs into 2D patterns for stamping machines, but these typically aren't working with surfaces that have complex curvature. I don't know if any of the CAD programs have an automatic unfolding function for the type of complex curved surfaces you are talking about.

I have done this manually several times by exploding the surface grid and then rotating each facet into a common plane. This is tedious and very time consuming, even though the program I use (DesignCAD) has an extremely simple and fast way to rotate objects into a plane.

Phil

I have no idea how accurate this is going to be from a CAD standpoint, but when you said you wanted to 'unfold' your model to a surface, I immediately thought of papercraft.

Here is one app that does that.
http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

Do bear in mind that they are designed for paper craft, NOT fabbing!

Apart from that, following this trail may lead you to something that will do the job for you.

Owen

Thanks guys. This gives me a direction.

DrPR wrote:Gabriel,

I have seen sheetmetal fabrication programs that will "unfold" 3D designs into 2D patterns for stamping machines, but these typically aren't working with surfaces that have complex curvature. I don't know if any of the CAD programs have an automatic unfolding function for the type of complex curved surfaces you are talking about.

I have done this manually several times by exploding the surface grid and then rotating each facet into a common plane. This is tedious and very time consuming, even though the program I use (DesignCAD) has an extremely simple and fast way to rotate objects into a plane.

Phil

I have been after DesignCad for years to provide a tool that would do that. It must be pretty difficult to do technically.

I just thought of this.