Comment on Does anyone know how to create a 3D wireframe?
TootSweet@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. Are you wanting to take an existing .stl file and create from it an .stl file with, say, cylinders where all the edges in the original .stl file are?
lal309@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Say I have an stl of car. I would like to take that stl and import it into , push some buttons and sprinkle fairy dust to create a wireframe of said car (like in the link provided in the post) the export that wireframe to an stl, svg, or whatever I can to be used on my laser or printer.
Alternatively, if such “import” feature does not exist, then use to manually create the wireframe of a car then export it the same way as above.
monotremata@kbin.social 11 months ago
And when you say "laser or printer" here, are you referring to a 2d printer, or a 3d printer?
The questions are because, fundamentally, a wireframe image like the one you linked is just a different way of rendering the same file. So if what you want is literally an image like this, then there are tools to do that, which will depend a bit on what operating system you're using. Blender, as mentioned in another comment, is one such option.
If, on the other hand, what you want is a 3d printable structure that resembles a wireframe rendering of the object, that's a more complicated task. The STL file just lists the triangles that make up the surface of the object; in order to make a solid structure that resembles this, you'd need to create a solid (e.g. a cylinder, maybe with balls at the ends) for every edge in the file (3n / 2 edges for n triangles, since every edge in a properly printable ["manifold"] STL is shared by two triangles) and then takes a boolean union of all of them. I don't think a tool to do this exists currently, as it's a rather specialized need, but it wouldn't be too hard to throw together a python script that could take an STL file and generate an OpenSCAD script that you could then render with OpenSCAD to get the STL.
moody@lemmings.world 11 months ago
An STL by definition is a triangle mesh already. Blender has plugins to import and export STL files and all kinds of other file types.
lal309@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Okay that sounds like importing/exporting an stl should be an easy task. Let’s hope it is for me hahaha