Community
Inventor Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Inventor Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Inventor topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

How to unroll/flatten 3D geometry?

3 REPLIES 3
Reply
Message 1 of 4
sveremey
1694 Views, 3 Replies

How to unroll/flatten 3D geometry?

Hello!

I have to do the opposite of the usual process, maybe someone can help me...

 

I have an old step file that is somewhat complex, but I want to pull something simple out of it... here is the rundown of the file. I can't post it so we'll have to go from descriptions....

The part is a roller, say it is 5" OD, 10" long. On the round face of the roller, but only on one side, there is a complex single line pattern. Think of it as text that was layed on to the roller, so it is now 3 dimensional because of the curve. I need that to be extracted back to a 2D path.

 

Here is what I have done so far:

I created a "sheet metal" cylinder that has the same OD as my roller and overlapped them in the same space, ripped the sheet metal in the back so I could flatten it later. I copied the geometry (using "include geometry") of the path to a new 3d sketch on the face of the sheet metal, and then tried flattening. What I end up with is a nice flat piece of sheet metal, but no geometry. I suppose this is probably expected, since the geometry has nothing to do with manufacturing the sheet metal. However, I need to figure out a way to "flatten" this path. I assume that the geometry is a separate entity from the sheet metal cylinder even though it appears to be on the surface, but I can't figure out how to "attach" it to the sheet metal, even as a sweep or something similar.

Thoughts? I can assure you that it is truly "flat" on the roller, so the only 3rd dimension is the curvature of the roller. Thank you!

3 REPLIES 3
Message 2 of 4

Hi sveremey,

 

I didn't follow everything you typed, but I was able to do something simlar using a Shell feature and Rip feature. Have a look at the attached example model and post back if you can't get your model to work this way.

 

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

Message 3 of 4

Yours works exactly the way I want (I think!)... so, thank you... however I think it is my method of applying the 2d path to the sheet metal that is the issue. I have attached a very simple file that shows how my geometry is applied. This exhibits the same problem I was having, when flattened, that geometry isn't involved.

The way you did it works. Can you tell me how one would go about turning my geometry in to yours? Yours seems to be integrated in to the shell whereas mine is a separate entity.

 

Thanks for the help, I am new to Inventor and I appreciate the quick assistance.

Message 4 of 4
sveremey
in reply to: sveremey

This shows that I accepted the reply as a solution?? I didn't...
As helpful as it is, you can see I still don't have a solution to my problem, but I know that something similar is possible. Can anyone help me figure out how to turn geometry like I posted into something like Curtis had drawn? I feel like I'm very close!

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Autodesk Design & Make Report