Hi you all good Moi'ers,

I have an issue with placing objects on a specific curved surface and I would like to ask if anyone have a solution for unwrapping surfaces, like the unwrap curve command?
I would then like to fill the surface with objects with an array command and then attach back to the original shape surface.

Is it possible?

Thanks

Stardust

How about using the Flow command with an approximately flat surface?

Ruled and developable surfaces can be flattened. Many surfaces cannot.
I think Rhino has a few "squish it flat" commands...

- Brian

Hi Stardust, the tricky part is like Brian says - just any arbitrary surface that has double curvature in it can't be flattened to a plane without distortion. Only certain special kinds of surfaces called developable surfaces can be accurately flattened to a planar shape that can be bent back into the surface without any stretching or compression in different areas happening. So surface flattening is a much more complex problem than curve flattening.

Probably my main suggestion is to just draw an approximate plane to use as the base surface and then use that as the base surface for the Flow command.

If you're having difficulty with a particular situation it could help a lot if you would post the 3DM model file with your geometry in it.

- Michael

Hi Michael

Thanks a lot for your advice, I will try some of your solutions
I will post a 3dm file if I still struggle with the model,
The model is a jewelry with curved face and I need to fill surface with gems by array command without using arraygem command because it has some sort of a cone curved surface, a bit hard to explain and I might need to post a 3dm file :)

Hello,

Evolute makes D.LOFT, might be worth a try if you are using developable surfaces regularly.

http://www.evolute.at/software-en/evolutetools-for-rhino