The goal of this feature is to radically improve the process of converting imported meshes into smooth water-tight solids suitable for modeling operations and export to common formats.
The Problem
The current "Mesh to Brep" tool is incapable of converting simple mesh shapes into smooth analytic surface / solid. As an example, I attempted to convert a simple Lego brick, starting with an imported STL file. After conversion, critical features like holes and extrusions were still faceted, not true cylinders like one would expect.
Proposed Solution
Rename "Mesh to Brep" to "Mesh to Analytic" and add the following capabilities:
Mesh to Primitive
- Sphere: convert mesh into solid sphere defined by center point and diameter.
- Block: convert mesh into solid block defined by length, width and height.
- Torus: convert mesh into solid torus defined by major / minor diameter and center point.
- Cylinder: convert mesh into solid cylinder defined by height, diameter, point at base & top center.
- Cone: convert mesh into solid cone defined by height, diameter, point at base center.
- Ellipsoid: convert mesh into a solid ellipsoid defined by center, and three diameters.
Mesh from Profile
- Planar: convert mesh into planar surface; arcs and circlular mesh segments are converted.
- Extrusion: convert mesh into extruded solid, incl. conversion of precise cylindrical holes and fillets.
- Revolved: convert mesh into revovled solid, incl. conversion of precise cylindrical holes and fillets.
- Stitched (N-Sided): convert mesh into n-sided solid up to "n" sides.
- Stitched (Arbitrary): convert mesh into planar facetted solid (current functionality).
Dialog Mockup
Reference only. The idea is to use the "Curve Simplify" options to get the desired result, eg. using the Lego example above, the initial tolerance of "0.01" might give you faceted holes and extrusions (undesired), while changing the tolerance to "0.02" results in true cylindrical faces (desired).