A Methodology to Create STL Files from Data Point Clouds Generated with a Coordinate Measuring Machine
Irenee Tyvaert, Georges M. Fadel, Emannuelle Rouhaud · 1999
Industries have always had the need to reproduce objects especially when drawings are no longer or were never available (reverse engineering). Coordinate measurement machines, whether touch- or laser-based, enable users to generate a point cloud representing a surface. The aim of this work is to develop a methodology and its translation into a software program to generate closed STL file models from such data point clouds. The first step in the research is to develop an algorithm to merge several surfaces (data point clouds) from a real object in exactly the same reference frame. Then, a tessellation program is implemented to creat~ the STL file considering computational costs and minimizing the number oftriangles while maintaining the accuracy ofthe original part. The implementation is illustrated on two examples and conclusions are drawn.