papercraft/README.md
Trammell Hudson 8f532ed2be features
2015-01-04 19:30:09 -05:00

1.1 KiB

Unfolded sphere

unfold reads a binary STL file on standard input and generates a SVG that contains the triangles "folded flat" so that they can be laser cut. It will output multiple groups in the SVG file that will need to be re-arranged to fit on the laser cutter bed.

More info: https://trmm.net/Unfolding_STL

This is a work in progress -- it is not yet feature complete. Current features:

  • Collision detection works to build a non-overlapping set of triangles.

  • Coplanar triangles will be merged if possible.

  • Mountain/valley folds are marked. Dashed line means valley fold.

  • Starting face can be selected or randomly chosen; some produce better results than others.

  • stl-convert script can convert OpenSCAD ASCII STL files into binary STL files for unfold to process.

Among the features that it could use:

  • A better heuristic for finding the maximum non-overlaping set of triangles (Currently breadth-first search is used, with a slight preference for coplanar triangles)

  • Tabs for securing parts together.

  • Collapsing of very small or very thin triangles.