Rhino or Sketchup?

[sd80mac]

Alibre Design has a sheelt metal function that allows you to build a part in 3D and then unfold it so it's flat with bend lines.

Donnell

Another question-- can either of these programs, or perhaps some other one, reduce a 3d drawing to 2d drawings for each surface?  Like convert a hollow pyramid into a set of 5 panels? 

In other words, is there a feature to create a set of flat kit parts from a 3d rendering?   

Dave

   

[DaKra]

Cool! Is that sheet metal converter available on the hobby version or just the professional?

[marc_reusser]

Alibre Design has a sheelt metal function that allows you to build a part in 3D and then unfold it so it's flat with bend lines.

Donnell


Dave

Very cool.

Marc

[mabloodhound]

Cool! Is that sheet metal converter available on the hobby version or just the professional?

It looks like the Alibre $99 version has the unfoldable parameters http://www.alibre.com/products/hobby/features.asp.
I bet a phone call would answer your question.

[marc_reusser]

Maybe of interest or relevant to this discussion...

DoubleCAD XT v3, is a 2D cad program that can integrate with Sketchup (and looks like other programs...or at least import and export directly to other 3D programs like Rhino).....and in doing so will retain all the 3D parametric info, and keep the objects created in the 3D app, as a block in DoubleCAD...lots of other stuff as well.

Looks like the Free version is a pretty good program that would cover the needs of most here. The full/pro version which saves and converts to a number of file types (including STL)...and has a good number of more intuitive and specialty functions is $700.

Here's a link to their home page: http://www.doublecad.com/Products/DoubleCADXTv3/tabid/1100/Default.aspx


here's a link to the Free/Pro comparison page: http://www.doublecad.com/Portals/13/new%20pdf/DoubleCADv3_compare_matrix_10-18-10.pdf


I have not tried this program, but may give it a test run (as an alternative to ACAD, for some of my work).

Marc