About Flatten Quilt
Use
Flatten Quilt to unfold surfaces, quilts, or solid surfaces.
To unfold a quilt, the system creates a uniform parameterization of the surface and then unfolds it, preserving the parameterization of the original quilt. To create the parameterization of the source quilt, the system uses a reference surface that approximates and encloses the source quilt. The system can define the reference surface internally, or you can create a surface and then use it for parameterization.
|  A Flatten Quilt feature is a single surface of the type Plane. |
The system unfolds the quilt with respect to the fixed origin point that you select. By default, the system places the flattened quilt on the plane that is tangent to the original quilt at the origin point.
Optionally, you can specify a different placement plane and orient the quilt as desired. To place the quilt, select a coordinate system whose xy-plane will be the placement plane. To orient the quilt, select a datum point on the quilt. The system creates a vector from the origin point to specified datum point and aligns this vector with the x-axis of the coordinate system.
Consider the following rules and recommendations:
• The origin and the x-direction points must lie on the source quilt.
• Surfaces of the source quilt must be tangent to each other.
• If the origin is a coordinate system, then you do not need a separate orientation point. The x-direction is taken from the origin coordinate system.
| You can create a reference surface for a quilt as a boundary blend by using the source quilt boundaries and several additional curves to approximate the original quilt. |