Dear List,
It was really nice to see so many helpful messages following my inquiry. I had been working at my application during the last 2 months and now a first working version is running in 2 labs. :).
To answer some of your questions:
Jeff : No, the task was not just find a solution (aka a commercial software which does that), but really do a specific program for the setups in the labs which has to be integrated with some other programs which are already running (here the limitation to Visual Basic; as a matter of fact, I agree with Greg - Vb is a poor choice...)
G.Sachs: To me, STL seems still to be the standard format. We keep receiving all our models as .stl files and most of the programs I saw for designing/exporting/converting know it.
The big problem is that is very hard to find complex STL files which are not faulty. Right now my program can slice the file, find the closed contours and hatch the inner areas, BUT cannot handle files with errors. And of course, there are some issues about size and time...
I have been looking for online STLs databases - without much success. I have found a huge 3D Meshes database (mostly .3ds, .obj, .wrl): http://www-c.inria.fr/gamma/download/ , but after conversion I get faulty STLs most of the time... I am looking especially for STLs of Santa (or something connected to Christmas) and of objects with movable parts (as a helicopter, wind-meal, gear, etc). Anybody who could share? :)
For correcting faulty STL files, we are opened to buy a powerful commercial tool. Has anybody worked with CopyCad from Delcam (I am still waiting for the trial version)? 3Data Design from DeskArts seems quite powerful, but a lot of "manual" work...
Good luck with your work as well!
Kind regards,
Cristina
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Received on Tue Oct 31 16:35:01 2006
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