STL instead of IGES

[mikerife]

MAPDL can export ANF and IGES versions of geometry that exists in its database. ANF is its internal format and I don't think any other program imports it (Space Claim and Design Modeler can export). Way back a coworker and I had written a APDL macro to generate a STL file from an tri area mesh. Attached is an example in Python + Numpy. I did not use any STL specific Python module as I wanted to remind myself of what we did. Plus it's not very defensive i.e. assumes no node/element gaps in the numbering. No other FEM other than the meshed areas. Does not write multiple parts (treats all as one part). What else...not sure at this time. Anyway it was kind of fun. Next step is to see what is already available.
Mike
STL.zip

[germa89]

Hi @mikerife

This is interesting.

I did run your script:

It seems to work very well.

I presume STL works only with triangles?

I think having the possibility to export to STL will be useful.

[mikerife]

Hi @germa89 Yes STL is only triangular facets. The points have to be in a counter-clockwise order so the normal points away from the material. If I remember right the normal is not really needed and is included as a check.

I like the idea as Space Claim has a lot of tools to work with faceted data.

Mike

[germa89]

I think this is an interesting feature to have ("export to STL").

Thinking on externalize as much work as possible. It seems that Pyvista can export directly to STL.

However, I do know that what we see in the plots we do with Pyvista is not the model, it is the "look-alike-model" (vplot only plot surfaces). I should probably check this, like writing a proper API to export fully the geometry to Pyvista, and then use Pyvista to generate the STL, etc.

I'm lastly rambling about externalize all the plotting functions to something like pymapdl-plotting library or so... I might do it... one day... eventually... if I get free time....