How to import and plot .STEP file.

Hi ¡

I have a problem with a little proyect of a robot.

I get a CAD model of muy robot in a .STEP file, I have to make a graphical interface that represent the movement of the robot. For this I have to asign some parts of the CAD model to some variable of my program (like articulations of the robot).

I don't find the way to import this kind of files and work with it.

Where can I have some information o something to do this....??

Can someone give me some reference for try to do it ?

Thanks ¡¡

[Matt Kindig]

Hi Javier,

STEP is a complicated format, and I doubt you will find a general-purpose importer function that is versatile enough to import all possible keywords that can appear in a STEP file. Further, because Matlab is not a CAD program, several common CAD features, such as curved faces, extrudes, etc. are not natively defined in Matlab, and in fact do not necessarily have such meaning.

Instead, I would look at the .STEP file itself (using a text editor such as Notepad) and see if you can figure out which elements of the file are relevant to you. Once you have a better idea of what information you want to extract from the file, we might be able to provide more information.

[Javier]

I found a way... change the format of the model 3D in a .dxf file and use a script "model3d" (this link http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/7940-model3d ), but I have a new problem... when I try to import the file, it load correctly, but when I try to plot it hte picture is empty, only with the XYZ axis but any model....

I don't know if I'm doing it correctly and I don't find any example of use....

I try with 4 diferents files but nothing....

In this site, I read that need to "compile Mex-files"... How can I do this ?

Where can I find any example of use of this script or something....

Thanks a lot ¡¡¡¡

[Michael Loibl]

I just wrote a step import function for trimmed NURBS surfaces created in CAD. Maybe, this hits somebody's needs.

https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/123425-step-file-import-of-trimmed-nurbs-surfaces