How to measure my part which is in stl file format?

Sébastien 0-B

5 Nov, 2013 01:36 PM

Hi,

You can measure in Meshlab! There is a tool in the quick acces toolbar.

See below, please excuse my english and my french image !! :)

Step 1:

Measure in meshlab...
Step 2:

You can also reduce the number of element of your stl to import it in SW

Go to filters, Quadric Edge collapse decimation
Step 3:

SW can handle a maximum of 100 000 triangles for a surface importation and a maximum of 20 000 for a volume importation (you'll understand next)
Step 4:

Enter the number of triangles. 100 000 is for the best quality, like I said, if you want to open it in SW, but it's really long to open... . Anyway!

I usually lower the number by 5 to be sure I won't have one extra triangle.
Step 5:

As you can see, you are not exact (really close)!
Step 6:

Now you got to export your mesh
Step 7:

Choose STL
Step 8:

Open your Solidworks, select STL format and clic OPTION
Step 9:

Choose the lowest case for surface importation (that's what I talked about in step 3)
Step 10:

Now wait until your model is created...For the exemple I dropes triangles to 20 000.. That's too long for me with 100 000..
Step 11:

And you can now measure with measuring tool
Step 12:

There is an other way to deal with stl in SW, but I don't know everyone have the extension in SW..

You cannot measure quickly in this method, but you'll able to redraw a stl..

Export your mesh as .PLY file (.OBJ works fine too). No need to decrease the number of triangle.
Step 13:

Go to SW, open a new file and activate SCAN TO 3D extension
Step 14:

Right click on the toolbar and select Scan to 3D
Step 15:

Now open your file .PLY or .OBJ

(Sincerely, I don't know why solidworks isn't able to open STL file as a mesh file... You really need to change the format to tell him : ah Ok it's mesh and not a graphic image)

Now you see your mesh