surface normal

May 17, 2005 2 Replies
B

Hi,



I have an STL model (or a VRML model) that its surface normals are not consistent. That is, some of the normals point out and some of them point in.



Is there a way in SolidWorks (or elsewhere) to resolve this problem and make all the normals point out?



When I load the STL file into SolidWorks, it gives me a warning that says: "A facet normal problem was found with one of the facets in the file. Please check the STL file." (it's a large model and it has several facets, so I can't possibly go through it and manually fix the normal direction.)



When I load the VRML file (of the same model) into SolidWorks, I select 'Import as a solid body' from the load options. But the result is the same.



Any idea?



Thanks, Babak ( babak_taati at yahoo dot com )



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M

"Babak" wrote in news:1116348782.408809.259970 @o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

STL and VRML are the worst formats you can try to import to SW. Can you get a Parasolid, Step or IGES? Was the model ok before it was exported from wherever it came from?

Does the model actually come in? If it does you can run an Import Diagnosis on it or delete the bad faces and manually rebuild them, then restitch the model to a solid.

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M

You can use *almost any* poly mesh editor to fix these "flipped" poly's. It's not un-common for this to happen. I think Rhino still has a trial (time limited) version available. Most of the higher end poly editors will fix these kinds of problems automatically. There's also a download trial of "Modo"

formatting link
that you can use to fix this.

Mike Tripoli

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