I recently was reminded that there is a useful CAD app that is very specialized in creating surfaces that can be "unfolded" for 2d manufacturing.
It is called TouchCAD:

http://www.touchcad.com/index_tc.html

I was thinking that Tim could have a chat with the developer to integrate the unique technologies that TouchCad has to deal with fabrics and unfolding?

From there website,"
TouchCAD is a combined 3D modeling and unfolding program focusing on the ability to generate complex 3D shapes, and converting them into models possible to build physically.

TouchCAD can be used for a wide range of tasks such as marine design, production of soft material based objects such as tents, blimps, awnings, inflatable objects, reversed engineering where copies of existing objects are being recreated, sheet metal objects, industrial and architectural design, sculptures, etc.

TouchCAD can also unfold very high resolution images applied to 3D models.

TouchCAD is available for Mac OSX 10.3-10.7, and Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7."

There a few video links as well.