Unfold Surfaces Question

[Ride]

Hi All. I'm building a bulkhead over a bar that is radiused and angled. I need to laminate the bottom face, but I'm curious if I can unfold the sheathing in order to layout the cutting of the laminate. See attached file. I've drawn the stud framing, and the 1/4" mdf sheathing. I would like to unfold the 1/4" MDF so that in top/plan I can start to layout my laminate joints. I've tried a bunch of times with no luck. I've never done this before so excuse me if this is a simple problem, or if I'm missing something simple.

Thanks

[Benson Shaw]

Hi, Ride - If I understand the piece you want, it's the Extrude Along Path which is offset a bit from the structure. Unfold Surface works on NURBSs, but not on EAPs.

Your EAP is an object with 1 top, 4 edges, and 1 bottom surface.

Work with a duplicate of the EAP. Move the dupe to protect your orig. Then Modify>Convert>Convert to NURBS

Result is a group containing 6 NURBS surfaces (top, bottom, 4 edges)

Dbl click to enter the group. Select the top or bottom surface and run the Unfold command.

Result is a Polyline located some distance from the source object. I usually change its line color. Source object is unchanged.

I suggest you switch to TopPlan and drag the new poly on top of the source to compare. Almost the same. You have very little curvature.

HTH

-B

[Ride]

Thanks Benson. I was missing the step to convert to nurbs. It worked perfectly!