Point cloud to Mesh/Surface/Grid to STL

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Isabella
Isabella on 24 Jan 2012
Commented: Zhaowei Liu on 12 Apr 2024 at 10:45
I have a data set of (x,y,z) coordinates for several points that form a point cloud in the form of the bones in a human leg. I want to use nearest neighbor interpolation of these points in order to create a grid and eventually an stl file to export to solid works. Thanks

Accepted Answer

Caleb Williams
Caleb Williams on 10 Jul 2017
Five years later, but may still be relevant...
Try using the "boundary" function. You can input a point cloud of (x,y,z) coordinates and it will return the solid formed by them. You can graph it using "trisurf."
Hope this helps!
  6 Comments
Zhaowei Liu
Zhaowei Liu on 12 Apr 2024 at 10:45
It still works in 2024!

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More Answers (5)

Andrew
Andrew on 24 Jan 2012
... it has lots of tools for creating meshes from various types of data.

KSSV
KSSV on 24 Jan 2012
Check the following file in mathworks file exchange...It will convert the mesh to stl file, which you can export to other wares..
Sreenu
  1 Comment
Isabella
Isabella on 24 Jan 2012
i need a way to convert the point cloud to a mesh. That is the step i am hung up on. There is also a function in the file exchange that converts surfaces to stl so i need to convert my point cloud to these forms first.

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Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 24 Jan 2012
I suggest you look in the FEX for John D'Errico's work on Alpha Shapes.
  2 Comments
Isabella
Isabella on 24 Jan 2012
Could you post a link to the specific file you are referring to? Thank you
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 24 Jan 2012
Darn, I get confused sometimes about what John has released or not. He has spoken of his code in the past, but it looks like he has not put it on the FEX.

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Anil Kamat
Anil Kamat on 22 Apr 2021
Edited: Anil Kamat on 22 Apr 2021
You can also do it using tri and trimesh function:
example:
DefoNodes--> x,y and z coordinates of each Node
tri = delaunay(DefoNodes(1,:),DefoNodes(2,:));
trimesh(tri, DefoNodes(1,:), DefoNodes(2,:), DefoNodes(3,:),'EdgeColor','k');

mars bim
mars bim on 21 Dec 2021
Hi, Great writing! I have a question about using PointCab Suite. I read introduction of Point cloud to BIM on an article https://www.marsbim.com/blog/scan-to-bim-introduction-from-technology-to-the-bim-model/ and understand about PointCab Suite Revit. And I know that PointCab Suite is powerfull tool for point cloud modeling and easily manage .LAS files and covert it into .RCP format. But when to load that file in Revit, I received some issue on that process. Is there any other format to directly open point cloud files in to Revit? Thanks.

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