Lay Components Flat
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Hey all, I've been searching for a plugin that will help me lay out parts flat on a surface.
What I'd like to do is take a model like this (table on the left) and lay all of its parts flat.
The table on the left is made up of a bunch of components. Each component has its axis orientated so that the origin is on the surface that I'd like laid flat on a surface:
There are two problems to solve here, one is just getting all of the parts down on a flat surface pointing "up" (blue axis pointing up) the next is nesting them in a sheet of material to minimize waste. In this model I've done that manually.
I've got to guess the first part is easy, and the nesting is hard. I haven't seen a plugin that can do one, or both of these things. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this could be automated?
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You might try Cutlist.
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There's code in my 'Slicer[5]' tool to do that...
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Is there a way to use Slicer to lay out components that are already made, or do they need to be "sliced"?
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They do need to be sliced...
However, the 'lay-flat' code in it is readily extractable, should you wish to 'borrow' it and reuse it yourself.
Note how each component needs to have its axes oriented appropriately so they can be laid flat... -
What would it take to pull that code out?
All I really need to do is lay all of the components flat with the origin point being at Z0 and the Z (blue) axis facing up... In to put more simply a script that would align each components axis up with the SketchUp world axis, and lay them all out in a line along the X axis.
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