Re: Color STL

From: Marcus Joppe (mjoppe@marcam.de)
Date: Mon Mar 05 2001 - 11:17:37 EET


One extension for the STL format to use colour information has already
been published to the rp-ml from Aad van der Geest some time ago. We are
using this extension within our new RP software VisCAM RP which will be
released soon. To my best knowledge TNO is using the same color
extension within their STL Painter software, but Materialise is using an
extension with a different bit order within their Magics RP software.
Therefore, colored STL files are not always comparable to each other.

Following is the extension of the STL format used from TNO and us:

For every triangle the colour information is in the attribute count (16
bits).
bit 15 always 1 (to distinguish from normal stl files)
bit 10 to 14 intensity level for red (0 to 31)
bit 5 to 9 intensity level for green (0 to 31)
bit 0 to 4 intensity level for blue (0 to 31)
In this way there are 32768 different colours.

Attached you will find a small colored STL file of a cube with each face
having a different color.

--
Best regards
Marcus Joppe

----------------------------------------------------- Marcam Engineering BIBA Gebaeude Marcus Joppe Hochschulring 20 28359 Bremen Tel.: +49 (0)421/218-5633 Fax: +49 (0)421/218-5633 eMail: mjoppe@marcam.de Mobil: +49 (0)170/751-8801 -----------------------------------------------------


For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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