Hello everybody !

Newbe to MOI3D and in "test mode on".

It seems great for my needs, easy to use but... so powerful !

A request (or wish..):

I' m in the leather market and the use of CAD is more and more an everyday need.
Actually there are few solutions for it (referred to this specific market)

Mozart (which is based on Autocad (and, of course, you need Autocad, which I hate...))

Catia

SolidWorks

Rhino.

For my specific needs they are too much (expensive, complicated, too much "too much")

But only SolidWorks and Rhino have an extension (plug in?) dedicated to a specific problem in leather bag/purse making:

Flattening the models to printable and usable patterns !

I mean, (for my needs) I can model a bag (making some "reverse visual engineering" but to phisically make the bags I need the patterns.

The solution for the above mentioned SW is ExactFlat (exactflat.com)

Now the request (finally..)

Is it possible to do something like ExactFlat for MOI3D ?

Maybe simplier or simplified ( I do not need any cost managing or nesting controls for cmc, etc)

Thanks in advance and compliments !

You might check if Lamina at www.laminadesign.com could be a solution. Lamina reads 3dm files and outputs the cut patterns. And at US$180 it is not overly expensive : MoI + Lamina < Rhino naked.

The site has not been updated in a while, so I don't know if the software is still maintained. But after all: If it does what it should, maybe the idea of updates is not pertinent anyway.

Ditto

Not sure if this might be yet another track: www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

Free FormZ8free has this function?
minute 24.10

Hi Luke, welcome to MoI and to the forum!

> Is it possible to do something like ExactFlat for MOI3D ?

I'm sorry but it's not likely to be possible anytime soon - there is a tremendous amount of work involved in making something like that. It's just not physically possible with only 24 hours in a single day for me as one developer to produce those kinds of complex tools.

For example in the ExactFlat description it says they have been working on the solving mechanisms for over 10 years... So it's a huge amount of work involved!

Since I'm only one developer working on MoI it just is not really feasible for me to try and implement something like that which will involve multiple years of work and is oriented towards one specific industry, MoI is a kind of general purpose tool and not one that is so focused on one individual industry like that. So I'm sorry but it's just not something that I expect is feasible to happen.

But you should test using the combination of MoI + Lamina Design to see if that might work for you, Lamina Design (http://laminadesign.com/) is very inexpensive and may possibly be able to get the job done for you, although I think it is not as optimized for fabrics as ExactFlat is and so I'm not sure if it's exactly suitable for what you need to do. I think it's somewhat more intended for more rigid materials like steel or plywood. But it does do stuff for making flat patterns so it's possible it might work for you. It's also not expensive.

- Michael

According to the features list on the Form Z website, it looks like the unwrap function is only available at the Form Z Jr. level and above.

Form Z Jr. looks to be about $500.

The description must be wrong Mark.
I just downloaded and tested it.
Unfold is included in FormZ free!

Glenn

Evrybody, thank you so much !

@Michael
I knew it was a hard job.... Anyway your Moi3D is amazing !