Tips and tricks – Pre-Processing STL files

Tips and tricks – Pre-Processing STL files

3D scanning and scanned data has been a hot topic for a while around the world. A lot of SOLIDWORKS users are interested in dealing with scanned data but don’t know where to start or have had bad experiences with Scanto3D.

SOLIDWORKS have recognized this and made some changes to 2016 to help users import STL files. These changes include an increase in the number of allowable facets to 500,000 for solid and surface bodies. There have also been improvements in import performance with import time for solid .STL files being decreased by as much as three times when compared to importing in 2015. However as you’ll see, just because you can import larger files, doesn’t necessarily mean they are workable in SOLIDWORKS.

In this blog I’m going to show you how you can use a 3^rd party program called Meshlab to do some pre-processing of an STL file before bringing it in to SOLIDWORKS. With some quick and easy to use tools I’m able to drastically reduce the solid body import time and make the file easy to work with in SOLIDWORKS.

https://youtu.be/P8Uh6UYlLGA

You can download and use Meshlab completely free from here: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

About the Author:
Logan Pegler, Technical Support Engineer
CSWE
Based in Auckland, New Zealand