Begin with the surface you can actually build
Papercraft turns model faces into physical paper regions. A highly detailed scan can contain thousands of tiny triangles that are difficult to cut, label and glue even when a 3D viewer displays them smoothly. Work on a copy, reduce the polygon count deliberately and check whether the remaining silhouette still expresses the shape you want.
This workbench accepts one watertight connected surface with consistent face winding. Open borders, duplicate faces and non-manifold edges are rejected. A collection of intersecting shells is not equivalent to one printable solid. Repair those conditions in the source modeling application before trying to create a cut pattern.
Understand what is read and what is omitted
OBJ geometry refers to indexed vertices and polygon faces. The tool supports negative vertex indices and triangulates supported planar polygons. Freeform surfaces and ambiguous polygons need conversion in a model editor. STL supplies triangular facets in text or binary form; the workbench recalculates surface normals from the vertex order.
Colors, texture coordinates, material definitions and image assets do not become artwork on the paper. No external material path or texture address is fetched. The result reports these omissions so an untextured geometric pattern is not mistaken for a full textured model conversion. Keep a separate copy of any artwork you may wish to add later.
Choose a size with room for labels and tabs
OBJ and STL exports often leave unit interpretation to the receiving application. Set the longest finished-model dimension in millimetres instead of assuming that an imported coordinate means one millimetre. The remaining dimensions scale proportionally. Page packing never changes that chosen physical scale.
Very narrow faces and short cut seams do not leave enough room for readable face labels or usable glue tabs. Increase the model size, use larger paper or simplify the source geometry. The workbench checks these feature limits and withholds incomplete output instead of hiding a missing tab. Start with the supplied geometric example to understand the relationship between model size, paper pieces and page count.