- #Solidworks 2017 working with an stl file professional
- #Solidworks 2017 working with an stl file series
Though commonly used for organic or complex geometry, prismatic geometry such as cylinders, cones and planes can be extracted as well. ScanTo3D can also be used to generate surface patches directly from the mesh data with the Surface Wizard. This is very helpful when receiving 3D scan data that may have artifacts from scanning such as extraneous detail, holes, or rough surface quality. The Mesh Prep Wizard walks you through each step, providing applicable tools, allowing you to edit the mesh file before using it in your design. ScanTo3D uses its Mesh Prep Wizard to move, smooth out, fill in holes or even delete sections of mesh bodies.
#Solidworks 2017 working with an stl file professional
ScanTo3D is a SOLIDWORKS Professional add-in and its main benefits over the Mesh Modeling tools is that you have the ability to edit/clean up mesh files and generate surface patches for organic or complex shapes. One thing to note is that once something is converted to a mesh body, normal features can no longer affect it so make sure to use the Combine feature near the end of your design! It can also be used to integrate the mesh data into an existing design as seen below in the “gripper” device used to hold the mouse. This approach can be used to modify mesh bodies, such as hollowing out this mouse scan for printing. One of my favorite options is being able to use Convert to Mesh Body (used to convert standard solid bodies to mesh) and Combine to perform Boolean operations. The slicing tool extracts cross sections directly from the mesh body for getting profiles and references to organic and complex shapes. Surface From Mesh can be used to extract primitive surface bodies (planes, cylinders, cones, spheres) from a mesh to be used as a reference or as part of your design. Even without using any special tools or features, SOLIDWORKS can now reference mesh geometry directly for sketch relations, allowing you to “trace” the mesh or build geometry around mesh bodies. Some tools may be familiar, such as Move/Copy Body and Scale, while others are specific to Mesh Modeling such as Surface from Mesh or Slices. The Mesh Modeling tab of the CommandManager (found by right-clicking a current CommandManager tab and selecting Mesh Modeling from the list) collects all of the tools that can be used to manipulate mesh data. While the amount you can truly edit a mesh body is limited, it does give you great options for utilizing mesh data in standard SOLIDWORKS parts or assemblies. In SOLIDWORKS 2018, mesh modeling functionality was added to all versions to allow some utilization of mesh files.
#Solidworks 2017 working with an stl file series
These file types generally save geometry as a series of connected triangles (also known as tessellations) and usually cannot be edited by standard SWX features.Ĭapabilities: Reference vertices of mesh triangles, boolean operations (add/subtract/common), extract primitive surfaces and curvesĬapabilities: Edit/clean-up mesh, Extract organic or prismatic surfaces and curves, perform deviation analysisĪvailability: Separately purchased SOLIDWORKS Add-inĬapabilities: Create mesh from Scan Data, Advanced mesh editing and clean-up tools, Advanced surface and curve extraction, perform deviation analysis SOLIDWORKS Mesh Bodies Mesh data is saved in a variety of file formats, the most common being STL, though you may have run across a number of others (.obj. Have you ever received an STL file from a customer or colleague and been asked to work with it in SOLIDWORKS? Or have you ever received data from a 3D scanner? If so, then you have probably been left wondering, “How do I work on this in SOLIDWORKS and why can I not use my regular tools and features?” In today’s article, we are going to look at three different tool sets that can be used to work with mesh data.