Re: reverting STL files

From: C. BROCK ROONEY (brock@mich.com)
Date: Thu Jun 06 1996 - 17:25:03 EEST


At 03:36 PM 6/5/96 -0400, RoyJRATC@aol.com wrote
>Customer of mine recently made an STL from his ProE file. In error he set the
>chord height much higher than normal - turning all radii into flat polygons.
>Unfortunately, he did not realize this before he sent the file out to be
>built (local SLA house). Unfortunately when the prototype came back in,
>Marketing got a hold of it & fell in love with the radical new design & wants
>the new product to be manufactured like this.
>
>My customer now needs to be able to revert the STL back into a ProE file
>without rounding out the flats. If he can't get this back in to ProE is there
>a way he can get an IGEST file from this STL?
>

We have our STLtoIG product which will convert stl files to IGES -
Wireframe or Surface. It is included with our IGES to STL product, and
is also available separately.

STLtoIG can combine 2 adjacent triangles into "rectangles", so you will end up
with lots of small 3 and 4 sided surfaces. If the stl file is valid (the
vertices match), it is theoretically possible to sew these surfaces into
a solid. HOWEVER, the sewing operation on your favorite BREP solid modeler
is probably designed to deal with the number of faces typical of its own
models, say a few thousand, and so may choke on the tens of thousands of
surfaces from the typical STL file.

C. Brock Rooney, Pres., Brock Rooney & Associates Inc. (Brockware)
       268 George St. Birmingham Michigan 48009 USA
(810) 645-0236 fax/bbs (810) 645-9020 email brock@mich.com



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