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Unit-4-STL File Problems

The document discusses common problems that can occur with STL files generated from CAD models, including: 1. Gaps or holes in the tessellated model known as shell punctures, which occur when facets are missing. 2. Degenerate or invalid facets, which have collinear vertices or all vertices lying in the same plane. 3. Inconsistent or incorrectly oriented facet normals, which can result in the model material appearing on the wrong side of facets. This is a common issue with finite element mesh generation. 4. Overlapping facets caused by numerical rounding errors during the tessellation process setting tolerances too loosely.

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Kushal Gorti
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441 views12 pages

Unit-4-STL File Problems

The document discusses common problems that can occur with STL files generated from CAD models, including: 1. Gaps or holes in the tessellated model known as shell punctures, which occur when facets are missing. 2. Degenerate or invalid facets, which have collinear vertices or all vertices lying in the same plane. 3. Inconsistent or incorrectly oriented facet normals, which can result in the model material appearing on the wrong side of facets. This is a common issue with finite element mesh generation. 4. Overlapping facets caused by numerical rounding errors during the tessellation process setting tolerances too loosely.

Uploaded by

Kushal Gorti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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STL FILE PROBLEMS

UNIT-4

Lecture - 3
1
Problems with .STL Files

• Although the STL format is quite simple, there


can still be errors in files resulting from CAD
conversion
• Moreover the stl files do not contain
topological data
• Many commercial tessellation algorithms used
by CAD vendors today are also not robust
Types of errors in stl files

1. Gaps (cracks, holes, punctures) that is, missing


facets.
2. Degenerate facets (where all its edges are
collinear).
3. Overlapping facets.
4. Non-manifold topology conditions.
5. Inconsistent Facet Orientations

• Inconsistent Facet Orientations


Inconsistent Facet Orientations

• Indicate that material is on the wrong side of the facet


• Wrong vertex ordering
• Often caused by using a finite element mesher to create
part tessellations
• Confusion caused if specified normal is opposite to that
implied by vertex ordering
2

3 1
Gaps – Shell punctures

Stray Scan Vector


• Tessellation of surfaces with large curvature can result in
errors at the intersections between such surfaces, leaving
gaps or holes along edges of the part model

A surface intersection anomaly which results in


a gap is shown
Incorrect Facet Normal Vectors

Facet
Original Surface

• Occurs if CAD package computes normal using the


original curved surface, not the facet
Degenerate Facets - Topological

• 2 or 3 coincident vertices
• Occurs typically due to round-off errors in converting
from a CAD system’s double-precision numbers to the
single-precision of STL files.
• Typically does not affect surface geometry or topology
and degenerate facets can be deleted.
Degenerate Facets - Geometric

problem
vertex

• 3 distinct but collinear vertices


• Added by some stitching algorithms in order to avoid
shell punctures.
• Undefined surface normal.
• Cannot just delete facet because it is important
topologically.
Overlapping Facets

 Overlapping facets may be generated owing to numerical round-off errors


occurring during tessellation.
 The verticies are represented in 3D space as floating-point numbers instead of
integers.
 Thus the numerical round-off can cause facets to overlap if tolerances are set too
liberally. An
Valid vs. Invalid Tessellated Models

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