topic Re: STL file import for sculpting edit? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 08:25:03 GMT

i have built a model in another design program and exported as stl, now i import stl into fusion,can i edit it using the sculpting workspace?

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

PhilProcarioJr — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 13:13:03 GMT

Short answer...no you can't.

For one thing if you want to edit a mesh imported into fusion it can't have more then 10,000 faces unless your going to rebuild the mesh using a plugin like this:

https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3aintersectmeshbody_windows64%3aen

But at this time I wouldn't suggest this workflow as it can be very time consuming and tedious.

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 08:48:42 GMT

by faces you man triangles? is their a program i can use to bring those numbers down ? ( 74k -64k=10k )

also thanks for the suggestion this was useful tool to add, i come from 123D so im new to fusion & memento and seem to be picking up quick thanks to the community

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 10:42:41 GMT

@Anonymous

Yes faces = triangles, but you have a two fold problem here. One is that your mesh is triangulated, two is the triangle count. You can use Blender to lower the triangle count using whats called decimation, but you still need a mesh with 4 sided faces to work well with T-Splines. You could also do this with Blender but I prefer an app called Topogun. It is fast easy and works very well.

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

TrippyLighting — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:46:54 GMT

What design program did you use ?

Does it allow .obj export of a quad mesh ?

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 15:43:33 GMT

this was not a design model it was a scan

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 15:53:40 GMT

The main thing you need is a mesh made of less then 10,000 quads and not a triangulated mesh like you have now. Any kind of polygon reduction will most likely end up with a triangulated mesh which will not help you much unless you use the fusion plugin I linked you to. So if you want to use the triangulated meshes you have now you will need a way to build a mesh made of less then 10,000 quads. There are a lot of tools out there for this it just depends on if you want free or paid apps. I do a lot of this work now and using the software I have its a pretty quick and effective process, but I still wish we could do this work in Fusion. Maybe someday but not right now. I plan to make some tutorials in the near future on how to do this, but right now my time is limited. What exactly do you want to do with these scans? Because depending on what you want to do will dictate what method you should use to get the job done with the least amount of work.

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 15:54:07 GMT

great and thanks, i actually just found out about topogun last night, ill give it a try i also found 3D Coat

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 15:58:06 GMT

yes that tool you suggested is pretty cool i found that if i create a surface sketch i can surround my fingers with a sketch plane and then convert or use the loft function to connect all the sketches together then later bring into sculpt and finish it

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 16:02:25 GMT

Both of those apps are great, test them out and see which one you like best. Since I bought Topogun it has saved me thousands of hours of work and gave me complete control of my meshes both scanned and hand created. Trust me once you get the hang of either of these apps you will use them all the time and never look back. In my opinion it gives you the greatest amount of control over both your meshes and interoperability between apps like fusion and other 3d modeling apps. It is a must have until Autodesk adds this type of functionality.

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 16:08:08 GMT

i was sold by the youtube video on both of this program, just like RetopoFlow tho it is a blender addon , too bad but this tool is better i think then the other two

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 16:09:14 GMT

There is a huge disconnect between the CAD world and mesh modeling world and for those of us that are engineers and artists and want to combine the two worlds its a pain that devs don't understand what we are trying to do. Recently I needed to make some set top gaming pieces for a client they needed some creature statues to have a hexagon base and the only critical parts were the base dimensions and statue height and a hole placed in the center of the back at a very specific height. So I needed my sculpting app and my CAD app to play nice together to get the work done. Since these pieces are going to be injection molded I had to have "CAD" Models of the completed piece to make the dies. This kind of stuff should be so much easier then what it is.

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 16:17:30 GMT

i hear ya i had to do a work for a client myself were he wanted a double helix design shape bottle for vodka and at the time all i knew was 123D lol i was going nuts using only my scanner and some cheap tricks like using my paper printer scanner to make svg files and some android app dxf maker to accomplish what was needed, it was a long *** process, lets not forget inkspace which i used to turn a pdf into svg and even that did not fully help do to the pdf not being too clean, seems the best tool we have is the ability to improvise ha!

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 16:25:45 GMT

This is the reason I don't mind workarounds so much....as nice as it would be to have one complete tool, this has never came around yet and I doubt it ever will. I have a lot of tools in my toolbox and each one is awesome at what it does so now I would just be happy if all our tools would just play nice with each other. Jumping through hoops like you just did with the project you described is crazy but I have been there many times. One of the reasons I use Fusion is at least the devs listen and so far from all my dealings with them they want to make Fusion as complete as possible and that gives me hope because other companies like Solidworks devs could care less about what their customers need or want. All they care about is the bottom line and what "they" feel we want and need. Listening is not in their vocabulary.......

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

TrippyLighting — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 17:35:55 GMT

Kudos to the both of you for this interesting thread!

I thought I'll add a link to a thread I started over the holidays.

While the main subject is T-Spline performance, one of the really limiting factors for mesh work even quad meshes is the fact that currently you cannot convert meshes into b-reps with more than 10k faces.

However, in the thread @jeff_strater mentions that at some point in time Fusion 360 will include mesh modeling. I am looking forward to that!

With tools such as 3DSmax and Maya AD should have plenty of experience with hadling larger meshes and modeling tools for meshes. If they rethink tools and worflows as they are doing with Fusion 360 it will be very interesting and should provide even more of the integration we are looking for between free-form surface and CAD modeling.

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 18:09:12 GMT

may i suggest this new tool http://igl.ethz.ch/projects/instant-meshes/

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 18:10:20 GMT

thank you is all a learning exp

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

cekuhnen — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 19:23:57 GMT

Before they add mesh modeling they should really add NURBS surface tools every serious designer needs. Fusion is still pretty weak there.

Regarding you mesh question you can also use : instant mesh

This one rebuilds the surface with quads and you can set density and even redraw the layout

Then you can export a new OBJ mesh with quads and feed that to TSplines.

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

btw it is free

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 19:27:54 GMT

lol your a bit too late with that one, i had already downloaded that last night but did not know how to use it till i came across the video on its website, i just finished sharing the link in other post i made as well thinking that im the only one who knew about this tool as no one suggested this one, bing bang boom, that tool did everything in one minute and then fusion convertion took 5seconds and after that i was able to edit form from sculpt worflow and i solved my own issue, but nevertheless thanks for the input

Re: STL file import for sculpting edit?

cekuhnen — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 19:29:45 GMT

@AnonymousYou are welcome! Keep mesh for TS as quads. Even NGONS can ah annoy it a lot.