Convert mesh into surface

[nkossowski]

Hi everybody !

I present you my problem : I would like to convert a mesh into a surface.

The initial file's format is PLY, but I can't open it with Inventor or Fusion 360. With other software that I have, I can convert it into : STL or OBJ.

If I convert it in STL, I could see it : it is tri-mesh. When I use the tool "Convert" there is a message "Warning too many triangles...". I have seen two explications in this forum :

• "Convert" does not work very well with tri-mesh : so I turn it to Quad-mesh, but it does not work more...
• This is because it is a STL file and fusion 360 do not like STL files, and it is better to use STP.

I have the same problem with OBJ.

So, in my dashboard, when I try to export the STL (or OBJ) to STP, it does not work too... In fact, it works but it is an empty file... And I receive a pdf "Warning your file was empty".

I have a student licence, so maybe that is why, but I found  nothing about this. Is it impossible to export a format in another one or to convert into surface with a student licence ?

Do you have any idea about what should I try to solve my problem ?

Thank you a lot for your help !

[Phil.E · Accepted solution]

You are close, but I think I can clear up a few things for you.

Unfortunately there is an upper limit to the amount of data you can feed any CAD program. We have found that Fusion becomes unusable when you open a mesh with an extremely high number of triangles. You have such a model. The good news is you may be able to simplify your file using MeshMixer, which is free.

http://www.meshmixer.com/index.html

Your second question, about export to STEP or STP, which is a "solid" format, very different from Mesh. Mesh files must be converted before you can export as a solid file. So you can't export as STEP without the conversion, and you can't convert because Fusion won't open a file with too many triangles.

And finally, there is no functional difference between the student version and paid version of Fusion 360.

Thanks!

[nkossowski]

Hi Phil,

I finally managed to convert the mesh surface by drastically reducing the number of triangle with MeshMixer and after converting it into a quad-mesh. The surface quality is reached but this should not be annoying.
Thank you for your reply!

[po94110]

How did you convert it to quads?

[samircury]

I'm after the same answer. I found that Blender is able to do it (one of the few tools that still tolerates quad meshes, even meshmixer dropped support to it), but I never had time to learn Blender to the point that I could move on on my workflow.

[innovatenate]

Autodesk Momento will convert Tri's to Quads! You can download it from the below website.

https://memento.autodesk.com/about

I hope that helps.

Thanks,

[TrippyLighting]

For folks with experience Blender, out of the box has a toolset that allows several different ways to translate a potentially messy triangle mesh into a good quad surface.

the remesh modifier is one such tool.

But Blender's UI, which has a lot of other stuff to cover is often very overwhelming to newcomers.

As such Autodesk Memento offers to convert a triangulated file into a mesh with quad surfaces. 

Another software that accetpts PLY files is Instant Meshes, which also allows re-mshing a triangulated mesh into quads.

Having a that said, however, no automated methond can beat the quality of a properly retopologized mesh. Such a mesh, while requiring a littel bit of experience and manual work,  will be magnitudes smaller, has better feature retention and as such is much easier to manipulate.  That you can do, for example,  with a Blender plugin called RetopoFlow.

[nkloski]

I would also offer up "Instant Meshes" to create quad's from tri's

It is actually shocking how fast this program works (PC only):

https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes

Nick

[philpilkingtonLRXLX]

Not exactly fast but I've had success using Freecad with this workflow

https://othermachine.co/support/2d-3d-design/stl-files/

using with meshes over 10k.