stl to point cloud

Hello

I have a STL file that i am tryongto convert to points clouid, or just the points cloud of the shell of the STL.

I tried differenf types of of STL reader function, but they all provide just the trigulation of the object wich includes faces and vertices, like the 'STL File Reader':

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/22409-stl-file-reader

The STL file was saved from SolidWorks by me, so i can save it in adifferent format if nedded.

Thank you for the help.

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

Use the stlread: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/ref/stlread.html function provided in MATLAB from R2018b. To get the point cloud

stlData = stlread('stl_filename');
points = stlData.Points;

[shmulik e]

This gives me only the points of the triangles. If there is a big face than they are very few points on that face, only the triangles points.

I want to have a shell of voulme point cloud which represent the STL and a I can control the density of the points.

for exmaple if i have a stl file of a cube, the TOP figure is what i will get from:

points = stlData.Points;

and the bottom two is what is want to have (either one of them, they generated just for an example)

[Ameer Hamza]

shmulik, This shows that the model saved in the STL file by SolidWorks just contains a few points. Is it possible to increase the use number of points in SolidWorks by using a finer mesh? Also run the following code to see if the points imported by MATLAB is same as the SolidWorks' model

stlData = stlread('filename.stl');
patchStruct.Vertices = stlData.Points;
patchStruct.Faces = stlData.ConnectivityList;
patchStruct.FaceColor = 'r';
patch(patchStruct)
view(3)