Mesh to Brep
I was not able to open this in Blender, so I installed meshmixer to look at the mesh. It looks like it has already been pre-processed (sliced) to be used with a makerbot 3D printer ans perhaps contains stuff specific to that printer.
This partuicular mesh is likely to be almost impossible to be used for anything else but 3D printing. It also has about 180k triangles.
I believe Fusion 360 limit for these meshes is about 10k and the aim is to convert them into T-Splines.
If you do get these huge meshes imported the best way o approach it is to re-model it based on that high-poly mesh using T-Splines and then take that into the CAM workspace. But, again, this particular mesh is almost totally useless.
Hi there, cool dolphin! Like Trippy said, the mesh has too many faces to convert to Brep, but in Meshlab I reduced the face/triangle count to 10,000 then imported and converted to Brep in Fusion. The help link you used is confusing, because it does not mention that you first need to go to Create > Create Base Feature before going to Import > Mesh. Also while in the base feature, that's when you go to Modify > Mesh >Mesh to Brep.
The ideal solution is to have a CAD file like .stp to import. When converting a 10,000 face mesh (which is quite low as meshes are concerned) to Brep, performance could lag. But you can do CAM operations pretty good, such as in this example I did a little while back:
I also was experimenting with using the "slicing" function of Meshmixer to break a mesh into several pieces, each with 10,000 faces, and import and convert each in Fusion, then do point to point moves to bring them all back together to do CAM operations on, but this is a fairly challenging process.
I attached a .f3d file with the 10,000 face mesh imported and converted in Fusion.
Good luck!
Jesse
The ideal case for these sort of meshes is actually not STEP format, because the STEP format for the most part usually contains solid modleling data.
for the meshes deicussed in this thread you actually do want a mesh, but :
1. Not a mesh made from triangles but quads.
2. Face count under 10k , which is a very high limit for any mesh to be converted into a T-Spline.
One of the most often used formats for that sort of mesh data is also quite old and is the Alias Wavefront Object file format or .obj. That format can be read directly by Fusion 360 and then converted immediately into a t-spline. This functions bed when geometry has been modeled with a Subdivision Surface modeling application such as 3DS Max, Modo, C4D or my favorite, Blender. The cage mesh used for a subdivision surface model translates flawlessly and directly into a T-Spline. I've tried this several times and it works beautifully.
It still surprises me how few polygons are necessesary to create a highly detailed model in either a subdivision model so T-Splines.
As mentioned previously, you can convert a triangulated mesh into BREP provided it is a closed mesh.
Your dolphine did not reperesent closed geometry, it was open from the bottom so in essence an infinitely thin shell.
If I remember correctly you can use Meshmier also to close the bottom mesh and make it "watertight" so to speak.
Converting a triangulated mesh directly into a T-Spline if even possible is really useless. T-Splines require Quad meshes. you would have to re-mesh or re-topologize your mesh. You could do this manually in Fusion but given the simplicity of the dolphin mesh you may as well go ahead and model the shape from scratch in Fusoion 360 musing T-Splines and learn how to model with T-Splines in the meantime.