Hi Michael,

Many thanks for the tips. I'm going to have a go at this over the weekend if the boy will give me time. I'm going to try to do this initially in a developable way I think, more in keeping with the actual material. My thinking is that a hull is basically a cylinder shape at midships and various tapers or cones towards bow and stern, trimmed to conform in the horizontal plane (that probably didn't make any sense either!). I will still have to do the unfolding from a polygon model as I don't have access to Rhino. Even so, I'm guessing I'm going to get a cleaner unfolded shape by staying as close as I can to a developable surface.

> Not in a fully general manner - for example there is not any kind of "force to be developable" checkbox that you can set.

Would such a check box be a possibilty for a future version of MoI?

Hi Mark, it sounds like you're on a good track for trying it out anyway!

> Would such a check box be a possibilty for a future version of MoI?

It's not really too likely.... This is a pretty specialized area and it is not an area that I personally have a whole lot of particular experience in. So it just is not really a great match for MoI.

Also it is a big goal for MoI to stay simple and easy to use and understand. Each kind of specialized option that gets added in will have a tendency to clutter the UI and make it incrementally harder to understand for someone who doesn't need that option. There can actually be negative consequences to adding in too many things, that's something I am pretty worried about in general.

- Michael

No worries Michael. I fully understand your concerns regarding feature creep.

I have been playing with export of a hull form to obj and have been reminded of how good the polygon conversion is. I'm quite confident this can be done with a bit of careful design and selective mesh unfolding.