I wrote something like this for windows 20 years ago, a friend of mine used it to make some cutout models for an art exhibition.
It's an interesting problem to try to solve. Anything but the simplest model requires more than one cutout, which you then (in my app at least) have to position by hand onto sheets of paper for printing. Performing the unfold to minimise the number of separate sections was not something I even attempted.
I like the clean design of the landing page. I downloaded it and started the app and it needs an OBJ file to even do anything, so I wasn't able to play with it at all.
It would be cool if it included sample OBJ files to entice me to find my own later. Otherwise I feel like I just hit a wall immediately in the app will probably not try it again.
The way I tested was search Thingiverse for "angular" and download an STL, then convert it online to an OBJ on the first search result for "stl to obj"
Sadly, some of the crenelations on top of it are just cubes with 2 sides missing that would be impossible to attach to the folded up rook. I imagine there is a ton of loss between a file for a 3D printer, a random convert to Obj with no settings, and this net maker, so I'm not unsympathetic to the problem. It's just that this is a printout that would not be foldable into something useful.
So weird for me to see this popup now on HN as I happened to dig through an old downloads folder a few minutes ago and saw an install file for Pepakura (13/11/2014), and wondered where that sort of thing had ended up... .
As someone who is not into papercraft I'm intrigued, but it feels like it's not for me. If the app was advertised as having a small selection of simple models to get started with, people in my position might be more interested in trying it out.
If I built a Mac app, the reason would be that I use a Mac, as do a lot of other people, and native apps are a lot more pleasant than non-native apps. I don't really understand why it's "restrictive"? There is no restriction happening.
It's an interesting problem to try to solve. Anything but the simplest model requires more than one cutout, which you then (in my app at least) have to position by hand onto sheets of paper for printing. Performing the unfold to minimise the number of separate sections was not something I even attempted.
It would be cool if it included sample OBJ files to entice me to find my own later. Otherwise I feel like I just hit a wall immediately in the app will probably not try it again.
Specifically I tried this rook from this chess set. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5994219/files
Sadly, some of the crenelations on top of it are just cubes with 2 sides missing that would be impossible to attach to the folded up rook. I imagine there is a ton of loss between a file for a 3D printer, a random convert to Obj with no settings, and this net maker, so I'm not unsympathetic to the problem. It's just that this is a printout that would not be foldable into something useful.
This one is called Unfolder, it's a different app, made by a different person, etc...
More than one app per category can exist, and that's good!
You'd make a 3D model from 3-views then use something like this to unfold it
As someone who is not into papercraft I'm intrigued, but it feels like it's not for me. If the app was advertised as having a small selection of simple models to get started with, people in my position might be more interested in trying it out.