Anyone know of any free or affordable software that makes printable patterns for 3d designs?
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Can you post an example of the sort of thing you’re looking to make?
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Not sure if this is what you need but Pepakura is a really great tool for turning 3d models in to 2D nets that can be printed out and folded in to 3D models. http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/
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loads of ways to do this either in 3d or 2D
what is it you actually want to do ? is it a mesh you are 3d printing ?
How many repititions are you going for ? if you want a very fine mesh you will get very heavy geometry and might need either a plugin or a good pc
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No my description is rubbish. I’m not 3d printing. I want to foam fabricate something and I need a pattern for it but I’m wondering if I can cut corners by creating the pattern on the computer rather than doing it the traditional way of making a small model, taking a pattern from that and then scaling up. Does that make more sense? I do have a model but it is too small to take a pattern from.
Very rough just sketching out my ideas. But wandering if there is a quicker way.
Yeah this might work. I can round of edges afterwards
You can 3D scan stuff but the results might not be good enough from affordable systems.
You could model this in 3D but they’ll be a learning curve obviously. A couple of good organic shape modellers are Rhino and Modo, and many others.
Alternatively, just make it 1:1 by hand?? What kind of foam? What mechanically you need it to be when finished, fairly light I presume?
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No can’t make it 1:1 has to be hollow and 5ft tall. I have the foam already CF100 10mm. Light is good but doesn’t have to be incredibly light as will have frame to support and counterweights if necessary.
Maybe I should just make a bigger model afterall 
Autodesk have some software that turns your design into laser cuttable slices, for cardboard or perspex?
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I used this for my final year project at universtiy 14 years ago. Great to see it still being updated! 
That is definately going on my 2018 project list!
you can use photogrammetry to get a 3D model from a real model, something like 123D is good enough and free.
Take photos with alot of parallax if possible, and in neutral ambient lighting.
You get a terribly heavy and badly behaved mesh, but you can re-topologise in something like
Z-brush, which will also allow u to add change model.
There might be a learner edition online, or alternatively its easy to get
a …cough…free-ish edition.
Never used Rhino and Modo but they are popular with medium, smaller studios so prob good.
Pepakura is what i use, fairly straight forward.
http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/
Made the paper amps in my profile thing with it.