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surf2stl

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surf2stl

by Bill McDonald

 

20 Feb 2004 (Updated 24 Feb 2004)

Write STL file from surface data.

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This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week

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Description

SURF2STL Write STL file from surface data.
    SURF2STL('filename',X,Y,Z) writes a stereolithography (STL) file
    for a surface with geometry defined by three matrix arguments, X, Y
    and Z. X, Y and Z must be two-dimensional arrays with the same size.
 
    SURF2STL('filename',x,y,Z), uses two vector arguments replacing
    the first two matrix arguments, which must have length(x) = n and
    length(y) = m where [m,n] = size(Z). Note that x corresponds to
    the columns of Z and y corresponds to the rows.
 
    SURF2STL('filename',dx,dy,Z) uses scalar values of dx and dy to
    specify the x and y spacing between grid points.
 
    SURF2STL(...,'mode') may be used to specify the output format.
 
      'binary' - writes in STL binary format (default)
      'ascii' - writes in STL ASCII format
 
    Example:
 
      surf2stl('test.stl',1,1,peaks);
 
    See also SURF.
 
    Author: Bill McDonald, 02-20-04

Acknowledgements
This submission has inspired the following:
surf2solid, stlwrite - Write binary or ascii STL file
MATLAB release MATLAB 6.5 (R13)
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Comments and Ratings (13)
07 Mar 2006 Mike M

Has good nift. Use with gridgen to make mathematical surfaces into stl files for cfd. mmmm

03 Oct 2007 Amanda L

very neat. Used for converting small pieces of scarcely digitized bone surface point clouds to STL surface which can be loaded into Mimics and Amira.

20 Feb 2008 Yoel Shapiro

Very helpfull! I tried for a long time to open a MATLAB generated mesh or vrml in different 3D environments and couldn't. This did the job.

25 Jul 2008 Max Lingamfelter

Very nice program. Does anyone know a way to write the STL file while keeping other data intact to describe the color?

maxami13@msn.com

19 Aug 2008 Bin Huang

Awesome! It helps me alot.

28 Jan 2009 Daniel Lopes

Thanks Bill! You made a very useful MATLAB function for geometric modeling purposes.
Woks just fine!

02 Mar 2009 Bart Ribbens

Great job! Thanx a lot!

18 May 2009 Zoltan

Nice!
But you could speed it up - it counts at large meshes, if you could find a way to avoid the for loop. For calculating the surface normals, you could use "surfnorm".
Thanks!

11 Jul 2010 Prashanth hanmaiahgari

Hi Bill,

What changes to be made in the program to get a stl with rectangular grid instead of triangular grid

Thanks!
Prashanth

02 Nov 2010 Mahalingam Paheerathan  
13 May 2011 Samarth Raut

@ Prashanth,
AFAIK, .stl is inherently meant for triangulated geometry representation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_%28file_format%29

What you can do is to split rectangles into triangles - e.g. rectangle (n1, n2,n3,n4) gives two triangles - (n1,n2,n3) and (n3,n4,n1). Note that the order of n1,n2 etc is such that the normals obtained by cross product of vector, say n1_n2 x n2_n3 points outwards direction and there is consistency in this normal direction among all triagles. i.e. no sudden flips.

hope it helps,
Samarth

24 Jun 2011 Jay Berger

nice work bill. i'm wondering about how one would go about adding labels to such stl files. such as, adding little spheres in a surface plot at a certain location (say x = 10, y = 10) and add labels such as "x = 10 & y = 10" at that location.

23 Dec 2011 zaeazeae

Thanks for this file! You save me a lot of time! Very helpfull

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Tag Activity for this File
Tag Applied By Date/Time
data import Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
data export Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
stl Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
stereolithography Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
data Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
utilities Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
surface data Bill McDonald 22 Oct 2008 07:14:42
potw Shari Freedman 05 Jun 2009 10:49:34
pick of the week Jiro Doke 11 Feb 2011 20:17:41

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