Dunreeb Cutout

Instructions for the Program

Contents

1  General

1.1  Overview

Dunreeb Cutout Standalone is a software which can be used to create Paper sheets from 3D models. These can be printed and glued, so that you get your 3D model as a real paper model.

1.2  Features

Dunreeb Mosaic supports the following features:

• Converts a 3D-mesh to a printable papercraft
• Handles textures, single colors or mixed materials
• Final page size of the papercraft can be limited
• Final part size can be limited
• The size of the lugs can be adjusted
• Optional fold- and cutlines can be drawn
• Numbers on edges and lugs help to asign for glueing
• Papersheets can be exported as SVG
• Mirroring for generating instructions on the back side
• Compatibility: Windows, Mac OSX

1.3  Remarks

Copyright: All names, logos, and other trademarks and registered trademarks and associated logos, mentioned are the sole property of their respective owners. The copyright for any material created by the author is reserved.

1.4  Provider

Dunreeb Cutout Standalone was produced by Dunreeb Gutschke&Klie GbR in 2016.
http://wwww.dunreeb.com

2  Dunreeb Cutout Standalone

2.1  Main application

The software uses 3D models in the OBJ format for the creation of papercrafts. As an alternative files in PLY format can be used, but without material properties. You can use the Open function to load such a model. The Open-function can be found in the menu item ”’File”’, but can also be activated by the second icon of the function bar. You can also use the keyboard shortcut ctrl-o.

After the loading process (which also takes some time for larger files), the model is displayed as a 3D object in the window on the right - the viewer - and can be viewed and zoomed from all sides using a mouse or keyboard.

To get a first result just press the ”’Start”’ button. Again use the mouse-wheel or press ”’+”’ and ”’-”’ to adjust the zoom level if desired. The ”’Start”’ button is now replaced by the ”’Back”’ button. Figure 2.2 shows the example as an unfolded papersheet.

If more than one sheet was generated, press ”’Previous”’ and ”’Next”’ buttons on the left to thumb through all of them.

Pressing the ”’Back”’ button will return to the model view while the ”’Start”’ button will be restored.

Figure 2.1:

3D-model

Figure 2.2:

A resulting papersheet

By pressing the ”’Print”’ button or ctrl-p enables you to print the desired pages.

Alternatively the current papercraft can saved by pressing ctrl-s or the ”’Save as”’ button in consideration of the settings. This button has a different function in the model view. Here it is used to save the current 3D-model as an OBJ-file including the associated MTL material file.

2.2  Control

To the left is the controlpanel. Here you can see the current page of the papercraft. If it is calculated and consists of several pages, It can be selected using ”’prev”’ and ”’next”’. In the 3D model view this part has no function.

Below is the zoom value. This can be changed either directly or with the buttons.

The properties of the materials of the current model can be viewed in the material editor. You can use ”’¡”’ and ”’¿”’ to select one of the numbered materials. The color values for diffuse light can be edited. The three input fields correspond to the red, green and blue values in the range 0.0-1.0. Three additional materials are added: ”’Default”’ as the default material, ”’Background”’ for the background of the papercraft and ”’Lugs”’ for the glueing lugs.

The progress indicator for calculating the papercrafts is positioned at the bottom. It will be run at most 6 times. The current work step is shown.

2.3  Additional settings

By pressing the ”’Settings”’ button followed by choosing the ”’Alignment”’ tab some additional settings can be done. ”’Drawing mode”’ enables you to decide how the generated parts of the model will be arranged on the sheet which is constrainded by the entered ”’Component distance”’. If ”’Autoscale”’ is checked Cutout will choose a suitable scalefactor for the model, else the entered ”’Scale factor”’ will be taken. By checking ”’Limit partsize”’ this size of generated parts/components are limited to the sizes entered in ”’component width”’ and ”’-height”’.

By pressing the ”’Format”’ tab you can adjust some attributes of the page. Actually the page has allways to be limited. The size can be determined in ”’Width”’ and ”’Heigth”’. Additionally the sizes of the borders can undependenly choosen in the ”’Top”’, ”’Left”’, ”’Right”’ and ”’Bottom”’ fields.

If your model consist of single triangles which are not connected there will no lugs generated between them. This is a correct consequence of the fact that if faces are not logical connected they will handled at a ”’not glued”’ state. If you will handle them as connected triangles which will leads to lug generating enable the ”’Merge vertices”’ option in the settings dialog after selecting ”’Extras”’ as shown in Fig.2.5. This will cause that vertices on the same place act like one vertice.

In this submenu you can also adjust the maximum width of the lugs or disable them completely. The latter is controlled by the checkbox ”’generate lugs”’. The program will try to use this value for the width of the generated lugs. Only if the lugs are very small and appears as triangular shape it could be smaller.

At this point, the loading of materials can be switched off. To do this, the checkbox for ”’don’t load materials”’ is set. If loading of materials, loading of textures can be switched off. To do this, set a checkmark for ”’don’t load textures”’.

Figure 2.3:

Alignment dialog

Figure 2.4:

Format dialog

2.4  Functions

By the ”’Functions”’-Menu you can reach some other possibilities of the program, which are discussed here. The corresponding keyboard commands can be found at the end of the manual.

With ”’Material”’, the display of the material can be switched on and off in both display modes. This includes the lug material (visible only in the papercraft). This can be switched on and off independently using ”’Lug Material”’.

With ”’Mirror Parts horizontally”’, all parts are mirrored on their own vertical axis. In contrast, ”’Mirror Page horizontally”’ mirrors the whole Page on an axis that is centered, perpendicular. Options ”’Mirror Parts vertically”’ and ”’Mirror Page vertically”’ are analogous, mirroring on horizontal axes. All four functions can be selected independently.

The option ”’Cutlines”’ allows you to select whether necessary cuts should be displayed as black lines. The option ”’Foldlines”’ works similarly for fold edges. These are shown as dashed lines. The line is punctured or dashed, depending on whether there is a ridge (away from the user) or a valley edge (towards the user). Option ”’Numbering”’ allows the numbering of the edges and lugs. Should an edge and a tab glued with each other, they are given the same number.

The options allow you to create assembly instructions. If, for example, cutting and folding edges are printed with numbering without materials, mirrored on the back side, glueing instructions are obtained without a substantial additional work.

Of course all settings are taken into account both during printing and SVG export.

2.5  Create

In this menu, you can create simple 3D objects. They can be saved as an OBJ file or used to generate papercrafts.

2.6  Shortcuts