Cloud point to surface/volume?

[scander]

Hi,

I have recently been sent an .STL laser scan file that I have to work with. I would like to create a usable volume or closed surface out of it. As a first step it seemed reasonable to import the STL in DSE and take it from there. However, after messing around with the available commands in DSE I have not yet discovered one that will automatically convert a cloud point into a closed surface or continuous volume. The scan itself is of an actual object, not just random points everywhere so I would guess it is possible, I have not worked much in DSE though.

Thanks!

 

[ferdo]

Hi,

Well, is not a perfect world. In the image below you can see an old scale model Romanian airplane, IAR 80 (from WW2) and also you can find a 3dxml file. I asked one of my friends to help me with the scan of the model in order to start with my "students" a 3D reconstruction of this airplane. As you can see, the surface coming from the cloud of points is not clean and frankly speaking I never saw a clean surface coming from cloud of points. So, what you need to do is to rebuild the surface having the scan as reference.

3dxml file

Regards
Fernando

https://picasaweb.google.com/102257836106335725208

https://picasaweb.google.com/103462806772634246699/

 

[ferdo]

My Dropbox is not showing the picture , so here is the link to file

Regards
Fernando

https://picasaweb.google.com/102257836106335725208

https://picasaweb.google.com/103462806772634246699/

 

[scander]

Hi Fernando,

I agree in what you say that scans are almost impossible to produce clean surfaces, but that is not what I'm after anyway. My scan is more dense than your airplane and doesn't have such large gaps/holes so ideally I would need a "fill the cloud point with volume" option. For my purposes, I don't want/care to smooth out the surfaces. In fact I know there is other software that does this .STL > STEP conversion but I wondered whether something like that would be possible straight from within CATIA.

I have thought of ways to reconstruct the original scanned shape but editing the cloud point but it takes much more time than it is actually worth it.

Thanks for your reply nonetheless.