How do you guys program off of the solids?

wow, thanks for your help. I'll try these ideas when I get back to the shop.

I'm just starting to do some lathe programming, and I have some basic questions. If I am given a 3d (.IGS) part file, do I need to simplify it to a 2d profile before creating toolpaths? I was working under the assumption that I do, so I tried a few methods of creating the profile. I'll list them: attempt 1. removed wireframe, changed cplane, selected all surfaces, create curve slice. result: nearly correct, but with gaps in the resulting wireframe geometry that make chaining and other things difficult attempt 2: removed existing wireframe, changed cplane, selected all surfaces, created curve on all surfaces, deleted surfaces, projected wireframe to plane. result: seems to work, but leaves more geometry than I need, so I have to erase many lines. I appreciate any help sorry if this isn't clear, or duplicates existing posts.

Can someone give me some tips for unrolling a chain. I'm new on mcx and am not sure what I'm doing wrong. The chain is in the zx plane and I want to unroll it onto the xy plane. My cplane is set to top, unroll axis is y. I select the chain, set the parameters and get nothing. Any help would be appreciated.