#Meshlab sketchup software
#Meshlab sketchup free

This design uses Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to prepare a 2D image of a hand-drawn sketch, Tinkercad to extrude into 3D, and then 3DS Max to round the edges.

#Meshlab sketchup software

Here’s another design walkthrough that illustrates how multiple software programs can be used to convert a 2D drawing into a 3D printable designs: How I Made: Custom Bat Wing Earrings by Ghostgirl. Photoshop + Illustrator + Tinkercad + 3DS Max Inkscape is great for manipulating 2D images, but to extrude to 3D and add beveled edges and hinges, the designer had to move to Blender. This design used Inkscape to import a drawing and then create nested offsets (shapes within shapes) of that image. But it really is a light 3D editor in addition to being a file format converter.As a simple starting example, let’s look at the angel ornament design created in the Shapeways tutorial Creating a design with moving parts. It can also make simple modifications to the nodes and edges in a mesh, align features, and so on. Closing holes is a biggie, especially with meshes imported from other programs that ZBrush doesn't 'get' the way they use the particular file format. In those cases, I can load the mesh into MeshLab and correct problems that ZBrush can't deal with sometimes, as an alternative to rolling back half a day's work or more in ZBrush. Other times they would completely mess up the mesh. Sometimes built in functions in ZBrush will correct the problem.

I've got various work-arounds, mostly because I often don't discover that ZBrush has borked the mesh until after I've put another several hours work into it elsewhere. Some operations in ZBrush can cause topology to go a bit wild. While ZBrush now has native STL export capability, I still use MeshLab occasionally to fix problems with mesh topology. But there were times when I got into settings and had a hard time with it. Normally, I found that using its defaults worked pretty well. Sometimes it's hard to understand what it's doing or asking about if you're not familiar with the underlying formats, however. It also handles options in export well, trying to convert and save as much information as necessary. MeshLab supports an excellent array of formats, and handles them very well, retaining as much detail as the format can provide on an import. I found it was able to get me STL and OBJ files from my Sketchup drawings, and it was also able to correct some topological problems or do minor touch-ups to my files. It has some basic mesh editing and correcting utilities built in. MeshLab is more than just a file conversion tool, though that's what I started out using it for. MeshLab was the best I found, of about five programs that I tried (and more that I looked at).

#Meshlab sketchup free

But, it's got a file format that's foreign to almost everyone else in the world.īefore I raced off to buy the 'Pro' version, which imports and saves in some standard formats, I decided to look for a free conversion tool so that I wouldn't be locked in just yet. For another, it seemed to have the sort of drafting-oriented mentality that I have. For one thing, it was easy to evaluate with the free version.

When I first started looking at 3D design programs to use for CNC, I used Sketchup.

Conversion and Basic Editing MeshLab Makes the Connection