Printing Part of a Net: Stellated Snub Dodecahedron

[Jonathan Lawrence]

How do I print one part of a net, with identical parts, for a large model? This might be [a] deleting selected parts of a net, or printing without scaling to fit the page. At present, if you reply 'cancel' to scaling down the net to fit the page, the print job is cancelled. I have tried printing a screen-capture of the zoomed-in net, but the result wasn't geometrically-accurate. Thanks!

[robertw]

There are several ways:

• Nets->Maximum Faces Per Net - In your example, set this to 5 and it will probably do what you want.
• Colour one or all sections as you want it (which I see you already have) and then select Nets->Nets/Paper Color Mixing->One Color Per Net/Page. If only one section is coloured, then the other ones may still join up, but the different coloured one will remain on its own. Then when printing you can just print that one and tell it how many nets you need in the print dialog.
• Finally, you could use Cutting Mode, and then Shift+Left-click on the edges you want to force a cut.

[Jonathan Lawrence]

Thanks!
Nets > Maximum Faces per Net... > 5
Worked perfectly.

[robertw]

Cool. That's kind of the brute force method. The other ways may be more useful in the general case.

[Jonathan Lawrence]

Update:
(1) Nets > Maximum Faces Per Net is indeed the brute force approach: it enlarges any errors, just like an optical zoom.
(2) Nets > Nets/Paper Color Mixing > One Color Per Net/Page gives an accurate, useful print.
(3) Cutting Mode, then Shift+ Left-Click also gives an accurate, useful print.

[robertw]

Not sure what you mean by "enlarges any errors, just like an optical zoom". All it does is limit how many faces can go into a net. Beyond that the nets should print as usual.

It's brute force because you don't get to choose which faces go into the nets. In a case like yours, it will put faces together around the 5-fold symmetry axis first, so you'll get the 5 faces you want. So it's good if it works. Otherwise try the other methods.

[Jonathan Lawrence]

Mystery solved: I used a normal office printer for the first approach, and a photo printer for the second two approaches.