Create Flat Patterns from Arch Profile

[jbobino82]

Trying to create a replica of the St Louis Arch.  Wanting to create 3 separate flat patterns, a top and the 2 inner parts of the triangle.  Having troubles figuring out how to turn the shape into sheet metal and separate the 3 faces into individual bodies.  Any one have any advice?  I'm fairly new to designing with CAD so not sure exactly what info i should be searching for to point me in the right direction

[etfrench]

Extracting the individual faces is easy, just use the Offset command in Surface workspace with a 0 distance setting.  I don't think you'll be able to manipulate it in the Sheet Metal workspace as the faces appear to be compound curves.  You may have to split the faces into smaller sections, then create flat versions to approximate them.

p.s. You'll only need 142 of them 😀

[davebYYPCU]

@TheCADWhisperer had a video for unwrapping a sail in Inventor / Meshmixer, I was going to link to it, but I can't find it in plain sight anymore.  Maybe under the other moniker.

(Maybe I need to bookmark the better ones.)

[hfcandrew]

Pretty easy to do in Meshmixer: https://help.autodesk.com/view/MSHMXR/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-BE9A6C80-A200-41BA-A891-C7B444D6AE83

Make a post on the forum: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/meshmixer/bd-p/6013

I'll answer it there.

[TheCADWhisperer]

I made some changes to simplify your spline sketch and anchored the triangles with Coincident constraints.
This video was for old version of Autodesk Inventor Professional (can now do it directly in Inventor without using MeshMixer), but the process is essentially identical in Fusion 360 with MeshMixer.