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Plywood boat plank unfold

10 REPLIES 10
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Message 1 of 11
lorebri
2287 Views, 10 Replies

Plywood boat plank unfold

Dear all,

 

I am drawing the hull of a plywood hard chine boat with Inventor.

 

Basically there are a number of boat stations that are drawn in as sketches on parallel and spaced planes. Stations are drawn as series of straight line segments representing the hard chine technique used for this particular boat.

 

The plank is created as a lofted surface passing through each corresponding straight line segment of all stations.

 

Surface is then thickened and it becomes a sheet metal.

 

I am unable to unfold or better to create a flat pattern from the sheet metal. The program correctly complains about the lack of bends in the sheet metal: there are infacts no bends as the plank is a continuous curved surface of which I would like to obtain a flat template for CNC cutting.

 

If it helps, I doubt the problem comes from compound twisting/stretching of the surface since the stations' geometry comes from an existing design of which several hundred plywood boats have actually been built.

 

Any suggestion on how to get unstuck would be greatly appreciated...

 

Thank you

 

lorebri

 

 

 

10 REPLIES 10
Message 2 of 11
CrAzY-MiKe
in reply to: lorebri

A snapshot or two would help us to better understand the issues involved, but I think the individual planks are not just one continuous radius, rather they curve smoothly at different radii along the length of the plank. Correct me if this is not so. Inventor (unfortunately) cannot unbend or unroll such a shape. It needs a single continuous radius, whether small or large, to flatten.

Michael Hollingsworth
CAD Administrator | Flexicon Corporation
Autodesk Product Design and Manufacturing Collection 2021
Message 3 of 11
rhinterhoeller
in reply to: lorebri

I'm quite familiar with the design process you describe.

 

The first question is "Is the design a truly developed plywood panel or just an approximation?"  Even if every station shows a straight line and these are all parallel to each other it's not properly developed - that would only work if every station were perpendicular to the panel and that's not common practice.  If the angle of the straight lines varies from station to station it's even less likely that it's been properly developed.  Chances are it's not properly developed but with a bit of shimming during construction and a bit of torturing of the panels the boat will come together in real life, as evidently they have.  Inventor can't deal with that.

 

If the panels are properly developed you run into the next limitation with inventor.  Sheet metal can unfold portions of a cylinder or portions of a cone, i.e. a constant radius or a linearly tapered radius.  Boats will generally be based upon splines with a continuously varying radius, thus can't be unfolded.  You would somehow have to mimic the shape of the panel with a series of flat panels small enough that the angular bend is very small, or a series of cylinder or cone segments with the average local radius.

 

I seriously suspect that if you'r goal is to pre-cut the panel from a drawing you'd be quicker to make a scale model out of balsa, measure and scale up.

 

Richard

IV 2013 Product Design Suite 64 Bit
Win 7 64 bit
Message 4 of 11
lorebri
in reply to: lorebri

Dear Richard,

 

thank you for taking your tilme to provide a reply to my question.

 

You are spot on. I understand now that rather than "unfold" the feature I should be looking for is "unroll" which will naturally imply approximation of the surface in order to produce the flat template.

 

I know some software programs dedicated to boat design and boatbuilding are out there (I heard of Hulls, FreeShip, DelftShip, Rhino3D). I will look into them.

 

Otherwise working the templates direcly from scaled down model will be the way forward.

 

Thank you;

 

Kind regards

 

Lorebri

Message 5 of 11
PaulMunford
in reply to: lorebri

Have you tried selections the internal face of the part before unfolding it? Have tough tried using the 'fold'and 'unfold' commands to work on each radius at a time?

 


Autodesk Industry Marketing Manager UK D&M
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Message 6 of 11
info4PCTR
in reply to: lorebri

Hello i have some part who can unfold for me i do not have autocad inventor i looked the unfold surface command not working on my autocad i am looking some one to help me....

Message 7 of 11
TheCADWhisperer
in reply to: info4PCTR

@info4PCTR 

Attach your file here.

Message 8 of 11
kacper.suchomski
in reply to: lorebri

Hi

Have you tried using the Unwrap tool? I don't see a description of this workflow in any of your posts. This is a tool that is used to unfold non-linear surfaces.

Of course, the result will be an approximation, but that's the nature of non-linear elements - regardless of the software; stresses and deformations are always created with this type of detail.

 


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Message 9 of 11
info4PCTR
in reply to: TheCADWhisperer

send me your e mail i will send to you dxf if possible i want to see how is it possible or not

Message 10 of 11
kacper.suchomski
in reply to: lorebri

Why don't you still use Unwrap? This is a tool made for exactly what you do.

 

 


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Message 11 of 11
TheCADWhisperer
in reply to: info4PCTR


@info4PCTR wrote:

 i will send to you dxf if possible i want to see how is it possible or not


If properly modeled it is certainly possible, but dxf is not a native Inventor file format.

What is the source of your geometry?

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