CAD2MATDEMO.M

3D CAD data to MATLAB Converter, CAD STL to MATLAB Patch.

Description

CAD2MATDEMO is a demonstration of importing 3D CAD data into MATLAB.

The demo includes:

1) the general program,
2) 4 CAD data file samples, and
3) a simple script that executes the program to show the 4 samples.

To get CAD data into MATLAB, the process is:

1) Export the 3D CAD data as an ASCII STL (or Pro/E render SLP) file.
2) This MATLAB routine reads the CAD data, and
3) Once read, the CAD data is rotated around a bit for viewing.

The program has been tested with: AutoCAD, Cadkey, and Pro/Engineer.
It should work with most any CAD programs that can export STL files.

Format Details: STL is supported, and the color version of STL that Pro/E exports, called 'render' is also supported. The render (SLP) is just like STL but includes color.

Only that data associated with STL or SLP files are translated, e.g., geometry and the geometry color. No textures, transparencies, or other such things are exported with the STL (or SLP) file.

Note: This routine has both the import function and some basic manipulation for testing. The actual reading mechanism is located at the end of the demo file.

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; 3D Puma Robot Demo, XMas Tree
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.5 (R13)

[Duane Nightingale]

Very nice utility that seems to be working for us right out of the box. Thanks for sharing.

[Rajeev Jain]

 

[Fadi Glor]

works great - do you have anything for performing boolean operations on stl-files? Like merging two stl-files into one? Looking for the intersection of two stl-files?

[Chris Barnhart]

Works great!

[Tom Mansfield]

This has helped me so munch. Thanks.

[abelmi ab]

I had tried it.It's work good.Nice job

[S G]

Very nicely done

[H O]

 

[N Q]

Works first time. Very useful, but slow for big models.

[SIVA PRASAD]

I WANT A MATLAB CODE FOR STL OFFSETTING(VERTEX OFFSETTING)
IN MY PROJECT I NEED TO GENERATE A 3D OBJECT WITH GIVEN OFFSET..SO PLEASE UPDATE THIS..

[Sebastian Held]

great demo; easy to use. Thanks.

[Ha Seungwon]

it's very good.

[Matt Donath]

Good demo for small models. However, it took 20 minutes to load a model of a transport vehicle.

[abelmi ab]

Look great

[Roland Lehmann]

Great program that saved me a lot of time. Thank you for sharing!

[Raphael Beckers]

Exactly what I was searching for. A little bit slow, yes, but I have no Idea how to make it faster.

[M Genest]

Great tool

I strongly recommend you modify the file opening function to pre-allocate the memmory. This allow to open large model a lot faster.

This can easily be done

[Scott Burnside]

After adding some preallocation I found this code to be very simple, straightforward and robust. This example is particularly useful to me as I am writing a 3D track display and was able to write a process based on your example so that we could develop our track symbols in autocad and bring the vertices and faces into Matlab as a patch object. An amazing combination of tools. Thank you for sharing.

[igor scardanzan]

what one needs to start exporting matlab patch in CDF pre processing tools
just slow in writing the STL file

[Sharina S]

Great work indeed.This helped me in my project.

[Greg C]

Any suggestions on the memory pre-allocation? I made several attempts unsuccesfully.

[Husam Aldahiyat]

 

[Alex Frid]

Hi,
i have tried to load a different 6DOF arm in to the code and bumped on problem of the initial location. How do you set what the initial location of each part before you performing the InitHome function call.

[badr Higab]

 

[William LaCava]

A note to SolidWorks users: be sure to export your STL files as ASCII, not binary. To do this for a solid part, hit 'saveas', choose *.stl, and go into Options. In my case, solidworks defaulted to export in binary.

[Jeroen Vandersteen]

 

[YT]

very good tools!thank you

[Joachim]