Flat Wrap vs Developable Surfaces — What SolidWorks Sheet Metal Can't Flatten and Where Rhino Squish Fills the Gap

A replica-aircraft builder models an FW-190 fuselage skin in SolidWorks. Lofted surface, roughly 1.2 metres long, tapering and curving in both directions. They try Flat Wrap. SolidWorks flattens a strip down the middle and nothing else. They try Flatten Surface. It runs, produces a shape that’s 30% larger than the original, and when they cut aluminium to the pattern and try to form it, the edges don’t align by inches. ...

22 April 2026 · 12 min · CadShift

QGIS to Rhino DXF Export Pitfalls — Why Save Features As Silently Drops Polygons with Holes or Self-Intersections

A GIS analyst exports a parcel layer from QGIS as DXF, opens it in Rhino for an urban design project, and a third of the parcels are missing. The ones with courtyards — inner holes — come in as the outer boundary only. A few with weird digitizing errors don’t come in at all. The analyst checks the QGIS layer: everything is there. The DXF is the problem, and so is the path that was used to produce it. ...

20 April 2026 · 10 min · CadShift