Flattening Complex Curved Shapes

[JamesM]

Morning All,

I'm after some advice on flattening out complex curved surfaces.

Attached is an example of a typical component that I need to flatten out. This is a surface that represents a curved piece of glass.

It was created using a series of sketches and blends to follow as close as possible the scanned data model for the component that the glass will be fitted into once formed.

This process seems to work pretty well until I come to flatten the surface out. I need this flattened surface profile (at a scale of 1:1) so I can supply our glass cutting machine with a suitable .dxf file to cut the shape from flat sheet glass.

The flat profiles produced using the 'Flatten Quilt' vary in size depending on where I put the fixed ref' point.

While I appreciate that some of this shapes may not flatten out correctly due to the complexity of the curvatures I'd like to know what people thought would be the best approach to the flattening process??

Any other hints or tips for the above would also be much appreciated as its causing me a headache.

Thanks. James.

[TomD.inPDX]

Overall, this is a pretty simple part. I would select a "centered' location of the point on the straight edge.

These do change significantly from one solution to the next. None will be perfect, and remember that it does not account for the raw material thickness either.

You might get a little closer if you can approximate the part in a sheetmetal part.

And you can use the flatten quilt deformation feature in case you want to add some sketched reference lines to see where the deformation is occurring.

If you look deeper into the flatten quilt command, you can tweak some settings. I find the UI highly frustrating. I have not found any detailed explanation and sample references to take this to the next level. Maybe you can get customer support to sit down online with you to go through the feature since you have a great use-case to warrant some help from PTC. That is, after all, why we pay maintenance!