Flattens a surface without restriction ?

[Anonymous]

Hello 😃 ,

  It's possible in Revit ( even with plugin ) to flatten a surface without restriction to single-directional curvature ,
we'r working now in a football Stadium in dubai and i need to do this in the Stadium skin so i can create it in my model i can do so with 3D printer but i want to try it in Laser machine but it only work in 2D ( X,Y ) then i curved it buy heat gun or vacuum x)

this is the skin i work on , 
examples for i wont to do

[Keith_Wilkinson]

I'd doubt it... you *might* find a way to do it with Dynamo but it would be difficult.

Flattening surfaces that curve in 2 directions is a very complex especially where you have penetrations - whatever you do you will have errors and it's how you control where these errors occur thats the tricky bit.

Software like Rhino has some tools to do this but they're pretty crude and there are a number of programs around that do this kind of thing for tiensile structures to calculate cutting patterns but not sure they're really what you need... 

All in you'd be better going down the 3D Printing route I think.

[Anonymous]

i already print it in 3D printer but i want to change the materials because the 3D printer is limited , now i try to flatten it in Rhino .

[Keith_Wilkinson]

If you have access to Rhino it will probably be your best option to at least trial it, I'm not convinced you'll get great results though.  Would be good to hear how you get on with it.

Re the 3D printing - look around there are plenty of different options out there and just about any kind of material now too... the tech is really impressive once you move away from the desktop 3D printers (which for their cost are pretty impressive n their own right!).

[RDAOU · Accepted solution]

If you want to experiment in Revit...you should know that you will need lots of formulas so if you are not good in trigonometry you might as well forget it. It is very possible yes if you accept the fact that unfolding curved geometries requires a considerable amount of time and a very good knowledge of trigonometry because you will need those for your formulas and last but not least you need to export it to a software/extension which your Laser Printer/Rotter recognize (I'm somewhat sure it doesn't recognize .rvt)...

One Revit method (If that dome consists of flat panels which in most cases it is...) you can model 1 adaptive panel; then use Divide and Repeat ie: place it on a divided surface (you will need 2; 1st is the curved which you place panel on and 2nd is the reporting one which panels unfold to) in conceptual mass and then use repeat...This is a fairly easy method and it is used to produce/fabricate tessellating cladding panels on curved surfaces. THIS would be the ideal realistic way (And cost effective - at the scale of a stadium fabricating elements in curved shapes will cost you savable fortune worked on 3 stadiums before and all 3 went this direction)

Second Revid Method is something similar to the following Youtube...Again this is for a wall; however the same can be done for a sphere

It is definitely doable in Dynamo or Dynamo+Revit together...With the aid of computational design (which I believe is an essential tool in 3D Modeling) thing tend to be done easier or more efficiantly...Should you need help with that; go to the Dynamo Forum HERE someone might be open to help you with the codes and nodes...However; if you don't have the basic knowledge it will be quite tedious...While you don't need to create/code the nodes on your own and you can download lots which were done by others; you still need to know what you are looking for to know where to find it as well as how the nodes function because it is not done with 1 off node unfortunately!

There are other software which does this trick easier than in Revit and Dynamo and some has the UNROLL command already built-in...You might want to explore options in software similar to SOLIDWORKS for example which allows you to flatten surfaces in general and exports to dxf which is usable by most apps that communicate with Rotter/Laser printers 

Alternatively instead of Revit/DYNAMO; you can use Grasshopper/RHINO...there is one tutorial online showing how to use the UNROLL command in RHINO...Moreover; the Catch in Rhino is that it is fairly easy to generate the contours you need for laser printing ... I think this is closest to what you are doing: UNROLL SURFACE IN RHINO TRICKS & TIPS

[Anonymous]

When i see @RDAOU name in replies i know its DONE =D

[Keith_Wilkinson]

he's certainly thorough!!  

[RDAOU]

@Keith_Wilkinson

It's a habbit one picks up when one works with university students 🙂 besides working in the Arabian Gulf for more than 15 years which forced me into using all of the above mentioned software...Can't pull massive projects without the aid of computational design