How to 'extract' flat planes from a model online to make pieces to weld together

byron_bleasdale

Hello all, very new to cad, learning the basics but what im trying to do is over my head. I have a model from thingiverse, a ornithopter from Dune and as a project i wanted to weld one together. The idea was to find a model and since the ship is almost all flat shapes, find a way to copy the flat shapes from the model, order laser cut metal and then assemble afterwards. I have a model, I can import it into onshape but cant figure out to 'explode'(probably not the correct term) the part so that the surface sections can be individually selected. If anyone could tell me if this is even possible, otherwise ill just dig in and struggle through hand modeling it.

Heres a link to the model, thanks for any help

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5125725

martin_kopplow

Do I understand you right in that you more or less want to unfold the whole body into a net plan of surfaces that could be folded and welded back into the fuselage and such? I could imagine that sheet metal could do something for you, here. You might not be able to unfold everything in one go, but find regions that could be represented as sheet metal parts with fold and cut joints, bent and assembled.