Polyface mesh or surface to manifold faceted 3D solid conversion
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- Last Updated on Wednesday, 11 August 2021 10:46
Automesher application for AutoCAD, BricsCAD and ZWCAD version 1.7.5 allows to convert any polyface mesh or surface entity into a valid manifold 3D solid object. In many cases, due to small gaps present in the source mesh or other geometry related errors, it is not possible to convert directly into a 3D solid, and instead an open surface is created.
In order to convert any surface that does not completely enclose a volume into a manifold BREP solid, Automesher application offers a dedicated feature which allows triangulating and closing any mesh hole present in the source mesh. In the majority of cases it is sufficient enough to create a valid 3D solid model from the input polyface mesh or surface DWG entity.
The new solids created from the surface conversion can be used to perform union, subtract or intersect boolean operations with any other 3d solid model present in the drawing. Also as native 3D solids they can be queried for their mass properties including volume, area, center of gravity, moments of inertia and other parameters required for the 3D printing process.
Meshes that fully enclose a volume and in fact represent a valid solid can be saved as optimized faceted BREP entities in the STEP file format, and all other meshes will be saved as open shells only. The advantage of faceted BREP solid over the open shell surface based model is visible in the STEP file size, which is much smaller for the former one.