I probably first discovered POV-Ray in the early 2000's, and was using it to
model a round brilliant cut diamond.

One of the things I was striving to use it for at the time was to somehow take
the faceted solid and convert it (a developable surface) into its flattened
form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developable_surface

I was recently exploring various idea and following tangents, and came across
some  links to software and libraries which purport to do such things.

https://alternativeto.net/software/unfold3d/

https://alternativeto.net/software/dxf2papercraft/about/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxf2papercraft/

I'm just placing these here to archive the links and perhaps some of these ideas
can get implemented as part of future projects.

While thinking about this, it was clear that there are certain forms that would
not be able to trivially be unfolded without overlapping, and that some sort of
maze-solving algorithm would have to be used to search for non-overlapping
solutions and backtrack when dead-ends were hit.

Also, some forms might not be able to be unfolded into a single flat form, and
would have to be divided into separate parts.

Of related interest is the work of a Japanese mathematician who studies the math
and geometry of folding - a sort of computational origami.  Details on that
might follow.

- BW

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