Lundstrom Design of Scandinavia has this week announced that TouchCAD has new support for importing 3D sail data. The purpose is to create sails with printed high resolution graphics, covering entire sails or parts of sails.
The new import filters allow sailmakers to make use of TouchCAD’s special image unfolding features. TouchCAD allows the user to apply high resolution images on any 3D shape, and automatically translate and transform the image into a ready to print in-scale unfolded image.
01 - TouchCAD can support the import of 3D sail file formats.
The unfolded image is deformed on a pixel level, over any number of panels with absolute edge to edge fit between the panels. The image unfolds come out nested panels, that matches the vector based equivalent.
Supported Formats
There are several supported forms for TouchCAD’s 3D sail feature. These include:
- Sails Science ASC 3D format
- Quantum Sails Spinnaker – now supports spinnakers to TouchCAD via DXF
- Sail Pack Mouldslize XYZ
- Azur can be imported via DXF
- North Sails PAN files
- Autometrix VRML files
- Prosail VRML files
- XYZ Point Clouds in ASC format
The company has a tutorial movie that shows the procedures for mapping images on sails. You can view that here.
TouchCAD’s image unfolding features can also be used for other uses, including tents, awnings, inflatables, exhibition signs, etc. To see examples go here.