Help with 3D stl mesh

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone. I am relatively new at using LabView, I was wondering if
someone could help me understand why I cannot view a loaded .stl mesh
in the 3D scene control. After I load the file, the control remains
black and nothing happens.

The online help is useless as it does not conteplate the load-from-
file case. Do I need to set certain properties (vertex array, color
array,...) before I can view the mesh? If so, which ones? Isn't all
the essential information already in the stl file? Does anyone have
access to a simple VI I could get inpiration from?

Thank you in advance for your time.

N Malagoot

[MehakD]

Hi

Are you using an ASCII STL file or a binary STL file? LabVIEW 3D Picture control only supports ASCII STL files. Some CAD programs save the files to binary STL by default.

The following link also contains an example program for loading an STL geometry using the 3D picture control:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/5218

I hope this information helps in answering your questions!

[R42]

Hello,

I have tried the example VI attached and I am encountering a blank 3D control when loading an ASCII STL file. Are there other operations such as textures and lighting that must be applied to make this work?

I'm using LabVIEW 8.5 Professional. 

[Will_S.]

Hi R42,

You can find a Community example here: http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-5691 that modifies the 3D picture control set for a ASCII STL file to make it easier to see the object.  It is a modified version of the example linked above that adds an Invoke Node for rotation and Property Node to change the Background Color.

I would also recommend checking the coordinates of your object. Is it actually located far from the origin (0,0,0)? If so, it could just be drawn off-screen.