creating flattened drawings in Rhino

In this second part of creating thin sheet metal parts in Rhino I'm looking at how to convert the 3d design back into flattened drawings with a few notes about line widths for printing.

[@grayskaut]

One of the best video about UnrollSurface. Thank you.

[@markklinkert3477]

Hi. Thanks for the video. I'm drawing a very basic object (assume a flat plate bent in a z type fashion). I understand now how to get the flattened surface for Lazer cutting but the flattened drawing doesn't tell the Lazer cutters what angles they need to bend on the bend lines (and the angles are not visually obvious). Is it possible to flatten the surfaces so that the final layout also includes the specific bend instructions? Or must I rather type them in?
Thanks

[@studiogijs]

any annotation you want to add you will need to generate as text (or curves depending on your laser) and include in the unroll operation. Best to do this with Grasshopper, especially if you have a lot to annotate, otherwise you will need to add that manually as a post process. There are Grasshopper plugins to add these annotations to the unroll, for example Elefront (or Bowerbird if you need text as curves).

[@betomvass]

Hello Gijs. Nice videos. Do you have any solution to include k-factor, or bend radios, to maintain dimensional accuracy when bending thicker metal? I have been having trouble making the drawings fabricated with the same final dimensions as the model. Thanks

[@studiogijs]

Well, sort of… but it’s not very straightforward to do this in Rhino. When I made the 170 long bench in Amsterdam Houthavenpark in grasshopper I had to take bend factors into account. So for this I made a custom definition specifically for that project. I would say that if this is your daily work there are better solutions for sheet metal in products like solidworks. The math is not difficult, it’s just that all the rollouts of the bends need to be scaled according to this k factor.

[@mannyarredondo7273]

Where can I get a copy of the drawings to follow along?

[@AerialLensVideo]

Thank you for this very good video! My problem now is that I cannot print full size patterns of my 2D object. For example, I have a complex design that is 33x24 inches and want it printed at 100% scale on multiple letter size paper which can be taped together, as an aid to cutting the sheet metal; Rhino prints ONLY 1 sheet of paper with only a small part of my pattern. I have tried many ways to do this yet only 1 piece of paper is printed. I am disappointed Rhino cannot do this. Any simple solution?

[@studiogijs]

Hi, thanks for your comment. For tiling your print across multiple pages, this can often be done in your printer software. But also acrobat has an option to print one pdf across multiple pages. So best is to print to a pdf on a large scale format so that your drawing is 1:1 scale and then use acrobat to tile the poster to multiple pages. You might want to add additional markers to the drawings for alignment.

[@AerialLensVideo]

@@studiogijs Thank you! Yes, printing or saving to a PDF has been recommended, BUT that option -- from the Rhino menu -- does not seem to be there. Down in the lower left corner it says PDF but when you save the view, there is no pdf in sight on my computer (Mac); nowhere to be found.

[@studiogijs]

@@AerialLensVideo what's your Rhino version?

[@AerialLensVideo]

@@studiogijs It is 5.5.5 for Mac

[@studiogijs]

@@AerialLensVideo in that case it should work normally by printing while you are in layout view. If not it’s better to post your issue at discourse.mcneel.com