Fusion how to create flat patterns for faces of solid from lofted rectangles along spline

[3acorns]

I'm using Fusion (personal) to make stainless steel kinetic sculptures. I am looking for help on creating flat patterns. The attached file and screencast show a simple example of my typical design flow.
1. Create sketch with 3D spline.
2. Create construction planes along the spline.
3. Create center point rectangles on each construction plane centered on spline
4. Extrude the sketches on both ends of the spline
5. Create loft of all rectangles following spline as guide. On both ends loft to the face of solid body, not sketch and connect using tangent option
6. Modify top face with chamfer

I've tried many approaches within Fusion to convert the faces to surfaces, thicken, convert to sheet metal, but nothing seems to work. My only success has been the following cumbersome and limited procedure.
1. Create surface body faces
2. Unwrap (flatten) faces in Meshmixer
3. Convert flat mesh to surface body
4. Make sketch of solid body using projection of body
5. Save sketch as DXF file
1. Steps: Create surface body faces
2. Unwrap (flatten) faces in Meshmixer
3. Convert flat mesh to surface body
4. Make sketch of solid body using projection of body
5. Save sketch as DXF file

Any help would be appreciated. Should I be learning Solidworks, Blender, and/or Rhino?

Thanks

[davebYYPCU]

Apart from no mention of material thickness, and seam (cuts - joins) treatment, 

Try this, 

1. Create surface body faces (With Surface > Loft)
2. Unwrap (flatten) faces in MeshMixer
3. Import MM STL.
4. Make a Mesh Section Sketch, on Mesh body face,

     trace with Fit Curves to Mesh Section, (Lines Arcs and Splines)

     add edge material treatment to the sketch,
5. Save this sketch as DXF file.

Might help...

[hfcandrew]

This always gets missed in MM unwrap workflow descriptions. Will help a lot with accuracy.

First generate facegroups, then .stl must be remeshed to a much higher density before unwrapping.

[davebYYPCU]

In Fusion or MeshMixer?

[hfcandrew]

The remeshing customization/options are superior in MM, so I prefer that.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MSHMXR/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-6EF8ABD4-AB4A-426F-A0C4-DE96FAABF520

[TrippyLighting]

I would actually set the mesh-resolution higher in Fusion (custom) and at the same time reduce the "Aspect ratio" setting from  21.45 to 2. That will create many more triangles, but that will allow the MM algorithm to have more polygons to calculate the deformation more accurately.

[hfcandrew]

Ya you are probably right, remeshing on both platforms would probably work best. Remeshing on export from the source should in theory allow a more accurate representation of a curve.

Then can always remesh again in MM if fusion does a low poly count on a portion of a surface.

[3acorns]

Thanks everyone for the responses.

hfcandrew and TrippyLighting: I think your suggested approach will improve the process. However, using MeshMixer is awkward since it requires switching back and forth between my old windows laptop (for MeshMixer) and my preferred Mac. Do you know if Solidworks could handle this on its own?

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

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@3acorns wrote:

... Do you know if Solidworks could handle this on its own?

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It can flatten developable ad non-developable surfaces, but you'd have to have the premium version. 

[3acorns]

Wow! I just checked prices for Solidworks Premium. Way out of my hobby budget. I hope your suggestions work on my more complex shapes.

Thanks again.

[kacper.suchomski]

Alternatively, instead of MM, you can use the Unwrap command in Inventor.

You can always ask someone else or outsource the task.