To elaborate, MeshLab will turn the point cloud into a surface mesh, which can be exported as an [STL file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format\)). An STL file can then be imported by any finite element mesher (e.g. Gmsh) to create a volumetric mesh for use with finite element software like LS-DYNA. I think LS-DYNA might also come with a volumetric mesher that can import STL files.
You may want to try MeshLab (free opensource STL tool) and read in a binary STL and write out an ASCII SLT file. Then follow what /u/u407 said and look for the lines with vertex.
http://www.meshlab.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)
Just clarifying terminology: A mesh is made up of polygons, called it's faces, which are themselves bounded by edges, each of which join together two vertices. Delaunay triangulation creates meshes with triangular faces. It sounds like what you want is a point cloud meshing implementation that results in quadrilateral faces. Googling around for something that might suit your needs, I mostly found papers... this one describes a new step after Delaunay triangulation to achieve a quad mesh... this one describes a new algorithm for generating a quad mesh.
Meshlab has a lot of fancy stuff implemented that might be useful to play around with.
This might be something you could accomplish in MeshLab:
http://www.meshlab.net/
If you haven't used it before, it's not a full editor like Blender, jut a bunch of "Photoshop filter" type operations accessible from menus. Your example looks like a solid sphere that's been degraded into rounded Voronoi cells, which is something MeshLab can do. Just export your box-top shape from OpenScad and open it in MeshLab.
Here's a video of the steps to Voronoi an arbitrary mesh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWSeZk2IqHg
Do you happen to have an iPhone with FaceID? If so, you can use apps like Capture to use the front camera to make an actual 3D-scan. You’ll have to learn how to make a 3D model from the resulting ‘point cloud’ (with Meshlab for example), but the results can be very accurate. I used it to make a bust-statue of my girlfriend with very decent results.
Another option would be to take a lot of pictures from varying angles, and use /r/photogrammetry to combine them into a 3D model. Might be a bit more work, but in your situation it might be easier to achieve. Good luck!
Hopefully I'll get my hands on a 3D printer sometime down the line. Been looking at this one for a while.
Prusa i3 MK3S
https://www.prusa3d.com/original-prusa-i3-mk3/
Only 3D software I been playing around with is Meshlab. Fun to created things using this software. But not good to interact with a 3D printer though. At least I don't think so.
What your using is the best software for a 3D printers of the ones I been hearing about. BTW what 3D printer are you using?
Do you know about MeshLab?
It's open source and in my opinion works better than Pro Optimizer. I first learned about it when I started playing with 3D Coat...
I work for an architecture firm we have a scanner called faro lazier scanner we use it to help document existing buildings to base our cad drawings from. It’s output is called a point cloud so we get just points in space but it’s has no mass. So I have been using Mesh Lab to take those points and make a mesh out of those points. I use a program called Recap Pro and Autodesk software to compile the point cloud data but Autodesk cut its meshing tool (classic Autodesk move) so we are finding a workaround.
Edit: I’m very dyslexic, so excuse my writing skills. Why I draw instead of write!
I'm not trying to do CAD inside the scanning software. I just need to measure inside some software, and I assumed that maybe the scanning software itself might be able to do it. The actual CAD would be done in Fusion 360 because it's free and I'm comfortable with it. I don't know of any feature in it to best fit a curve to a mesh, but that's exactly what I want to do.
I found a piece of FOSS that may be able to do it: MeshLab
>Mean Curvature is what you need, you can think it as the divergence of the normals over the surface and it captures well the concept of characterizing local variation of the surface. There is a vast literature on computing curvatures on discrete triangulated surface and MeshLab exposed a few different methods (and it has also a couple of methods for computing them on Point Clouds).
(https://meshlabstuff.blogspot.com/2010/03/mean-curvature-cavity-map-zbrush-and.html)
At first glance, though, it looks like the author is using it to generate a texture that expresses the mean curvature at all locations on the model and then importing it into Zbrush to drive some ambient occlusion feature. I just want the value at particular point on the model. Maybe that's easy to get, and maybe not.
I guess I'll dive into it and see what it can do. Thanks for talking through this with me.
Materialise Magics is my go to.
There are also much less expensive options, but I don't have much experience with them. Meshlab comes to mind.
I’ve found Meshlab to be a decent tool for photogrammetric clean up work. It’s also got lots of nice tools for decimating and reducing your models to make them easier to work with.
My favorite 3D modeling software is Meshlab.
If you play around with 3D printers as well then you either need. Cura or Slic3r.
I can help you on all software. I try many and I can tell you which one I like and works for me.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-apps-prove-dont-need-adobe-creative-suite-linux/
I been using Linux for 16 years and haven't touch Windows or it's applications in that same amount of time. I switch 100% to Linux back in July 15th of 2003. If I can do it, anybody can do it.
Yeah direct export to obj then import into Gravity Sketch would probably be best but as you say it's a Sketchup Pro feature and who can afford that? I've been experimenting with exporting to .dae from Sketchup then using Meshlab (http://www.meshlab.net/) to convert to .obj then importing to Gravity Sketch. It's a pain but it kind of works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNOYaLg2CgU
Just checked out what a .ply file is. According to Wikipedia it looks like Meshlab might be able to open and convert your ply files to STL or other formats you can open in other more familiar software.
The one I like to use, which I don't see many people even mention about it and that is MeshLab.
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To me it's easy to use. Yes, do read the manual and find other info about this software. But it didn't take me to long to figure out how to use this software.
Meshlab can convert pointcloud to watertight mesh using Poisson reconstruction.
Several suggestions here for converting DICOM (towards the bottom of thepage), including using 3D Slicer.
I would try cleaning it up in Meshlab and then exporting it to Max. Meshlab is a free program that is really amazing at some things. Hopefully it can help you too!
I'm not super familiar with meshroom, so I can't comment. But I will be soon.
oh okay, so you could edit it out in blender.
Check out meshlab if your not familiar with it it might be useful to you for other things.
So for your GIMP solution, use BIMP and Color to Alpha
You will want to get ASCII STL files, so they're easy to read, then look for lines that begin with VERTEX. Try using MeshLab to convert binart STL to ASCII STL, it's free opensource.
http://www.meshlab.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)
You can upload this file to netfabb to see if it can make some work on it
https://service.netfabb.com/login.php
or download meshlab for free and then follow this tutorial, it's fairly easy, about 7 steps:
I've had to use meshlab to fix a few files unfortunatly.
I do my modeling in Hexagon which can export STL. It is now free from DAZ3D. It is an easy to use modeller. If the STL has errors, Meshlab or Mesh Mixer can fix it up.
Download Meshlab. Select Filters>Remesh>Butterfly Subdivision. Give it 10 passes at .25 and see if it improves it. It should remesh all your polygons to make a good surface. There is no un do function in Meshlab so if you don't like it, you have to re-import your mesh.
If you are still getting errors in your STL, then you can bring it into Autodesk Meshmixer and have it analyze and try to fix it. However, Meshmixer doesn't do as good a job IMHO - it all depends on how bad the holes/errors are but you should have many or any after export from Meshlab. Both awesome apps are FREE.
Meshlab: http://www.meshlab.net/
Meshmixer: http://www.meshmixer.com/
When using these models bear in mind some of them are very large with a lot of data points so you may have to simplify them before trying to slice or print them. This can be achieved using something like Meshlab
I do a lot of finite element meshing. Your data looks a lot like noise, not sure how to translate that into a surface mesh. What is it supposed to look like?
You can try surface tesselation in meshlab, its only a few clicks and you can coarsen/refine the mesh easily, along with test mesh quality a looooot easier than within MATLAB. Best of all its free and has a looot of online tutorials/forum help.
MATLAB does grids well, and it can process meshes once you have them. From personal experience, creating complex geometry meshes is usually done elsewhere.
Yeah, .STL is a pretty coarse file format. If you try a direct import from .STL into SolidWorks you can pretty easily run into the 10,000 facet limit. You can use Meshlab (http://www.meshlab.net/#download) to open the .STL and convert into a 3D .DXF file though which has no facet limit when importing to SolidWorks.
I won't lie translating .STL to 3D .DXF and then into SolidWorks comes up with a mangled file most of the time but it usually gets enough geometry in that you can either reconstruct the missing portions of the model or use as a references to build the model from the ground up. It may worth trying before you print it to take measurements off of.