Smoothing Out a Chunky STL File?

[phlyx]

We had a demo of a new Keyence 3D scanner and for part of the demo, the rep scanned in a piece of machinery we could not get 3D models for.  The scan looked good on their system, but when we open it with Inventor 2022.5 (I am also running 2024 if that has any new feature that may help) it is just a mass of triangles.  What we would like to do is make this a smooth model, dumb solid, so we can put it in our assembly for reference and also fill in some of the areas that the scanner missed.  It looks like this:

And is basically a big dark mass on the screen.  I have mesh enabler installed and did a "Convert to Base Feature", got a warning it was over 5000 triangle and would take a long time, so I let it run overnight.  This morning it had finished and basically looked like a hundred rolls of fishing line exploded on my screen.  Ugh.

Is there any way to turn this into a smoothed out model so we can add it to our top level assembly?

Thanks in advance!

[kacper.suchomski]

Hi

When you open the mesh, set the visual style to edgeless.

Is there a way to create a model from a mesh?

Good news - Yes.
The bad news - only with hard work.

You will use the mesh points to create workplanes and for projection in order to correctly position the sketches.

You can create some surfaces faster using this tool:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2025/ENU/?guid=GUID-BDCF1B3C-E5F1-45CF-B506-0B16AB21314E

Easily creates free, flat or cylindrical surfaces.

But generally speaking - mesh is a reference material - and with this you have a lot of work to do on the model.

[Frederick_Law]

Welcome to the 3D scanning world.

Call the demo person.

They should have software to clean up and make 3D model.

My scanning software can "close" the surface and make solid.

Geomagic is one: https://www.3dsystems.com/software

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Scott,

You may want to try out the Mesh Design environment in Fusion 360. It does have the ability to convert mesh to smooth Tspline geometry.

Many thanks!

[phlyx]

Thanks for the input and @johnsonshiue I just installed Fusion and I'll give that a try.  The scanner guy was just giving a demo so didn't want to impose on him more than we already did.

[phlyx]

@johnsonshiue, installed Fusion and was playing around with some mesh functions and looked like converting it to "organic" might be what I need, but that's an extra $$$ add-in.  Cannot find anything else to make these smooth.  Do you have any experts there that could try?  Don't want to put the mesh models in the forums but I could email them or get them to you somehow.

[Frederick_Law]

https://all3dp.com/2/editing-stl-in-fusion-tutorial/