Unfolding difficulties

[Dragon]

Hey guys Im having a bit of trouble with my 3d models when i put them into Pepakura Designer to unfold them. I get alot of open edges that I cant seem to close or open edges that dont exist in the original model :confused. In case youre wondering Im using SketchUp 8, any ideas or pointers as to why this is happening would be great.

Cheers Dragon

 

[fat hi555]

As a sketchup user, i know how much of a pain it is to remove those open edges. What i always do is look for the open edges in pepakura designer while opening the same file on sketchup. Then, erase those lines with the open edges and redraw(?) them.

These step may not be able to work on all the open edges, but its the only way i know of. Thats all i can say. Good luck.

 

[Dragon]

Thanks for the tip, Ill give it a go & see if it changes anything.

Cheers Dragon

 

[Ral Partha]

I don't use SU8 but I'm a regular user of SU6 so hopefully the following will work for you:

• To spot an open edge, look for an unusually heavy line on the model. Slowly rotate the model left to right or top to bottom just a little bit and see if the line thickness changes or becomes thinner. If it doesn't, this will appear as an open edge on Designer.
• When you connect two corners, SU will automatically create a plane face. However, this will only work if you connect the corners that happen to be endpoints also.
• Speaking of creating plane faces, this feature sometimes creates a double layer, which also shows up open edges on the model when viewed in Designer. This is harder to spot in SU but try deleting a face. Another face will be underneath if there's a double layer. If not, just click the Undo button.

Hope these help.

 

[Dragon]

Thanks for the tips Ral but its all fixed up now I just followed what fat-hi555 suggested & no more open edges.

Cheers Dragon