unwrapping a curved surface

[swal0021]

i need to unwrap the outside surface so that it can be laser cut from sheet metal. any help would be appreciated. tried meshmixer and rhino and no go. it is a 3d scan of an existing product. 

[Lewis.Young]

Hello,

Welcome to the forum! Please could you attach the file to a reply so that someone can have a look?

Also, in the future it's best to state the version of Inventor you're using in the post as some people (myself included) aren't using the latest release 🙂

Lewis Young
Windows 7 x64 - 32GB Ram
Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz
nVidia Quadro M2000 - 4GB
Inventor Professional 2017.3
Vault Basic 2017
3ds Max 2018

[BrennanJWilkie]

Not related to the question, but I've run into this problem a few times: someone posts a file and I am unable to open it with my version of inventor (2016). Is this because they are using a newer version, and is there anything I can do to open it on my version?

[Lewis.Young]

Hello,

Yeah pretty much, with every new release of Inventor they change the file format slightly (i'm not sure on the exact details) meaning older releases can't edit newer files. If you go to open a file from an older release (let's say you opened an Inv 2015 file), it would then prompt you to update that file to match the release.

As for workarounds, the only options i've come across are:

• Getting the original designer to redesign it in an older release
• Get the designer to export the file in a neutral format (step, sat etc.) so that you can import it. The downside to this is you'll lose the feature details on the browser tree.
• If it's a file on your own PC and you've accidentally updated it to a new release, restore an older version from back up.

Thankfully on recent releases it's now possible to open files that are newer, but not edit them

Lewis Young
Windows 7 x64 - 32GB Ram
Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz
nVidia Quadro M2000 - 4GB
Inventor Professional 2017.3
Vault Basic 2017
3ds Max 2018

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I believe you can do it on Inventor 2020 using Unwrap command. Do you have access to 2020?

Many thanks!