Write the name of a solid into STL. - Forum Open Cascade Technology

Dominik Mokris
Thu, 04/27/2017 - 16:02

Forums:

Hello everyone,

is it possible to specify what will be written on the first line of an STL file?

When I run

TopoDS_Shape shape;
// (Get the shape from an assembly...)
BRepMesh_IncrementalMesh BMesh(shape, 0.1, Standard_True);
STLwriter.Write(shape,filename);

the first line of the STL file says "solid shape, STL ascii file, created with Open CASCADE Technology".
However, I would like to decide what will follow after the "solid" keyword.

Of course, I could copy it line-by-line into a new file and change the line but that sounds like an unnecessarily complicated approach.

Thanks

Kirill Gavrilov
Sat, 04/29/2017 - 12:40

There is no such an option in STL writer, yet. But it should be pretty simple to implement - you can contribute a patch to OCCT or use support services.

By the way, in case of Binary format, you don't need to re-write entire file - the header section at the very beginning of file is always 80 bytes long, which can be easily overwritten afterwards.

Hugues Delorme
Thu, 05/11/2017 - 18:26

Hello Dominik,

You can use the gmio library for that.

Call function gmio_stl_write() or gmio_stl_write_file() with :

a gmio_stl_mesh_occshape object for the "gmio_stl_mesh" parameter
a gmio_stl_write_options struct that set the "stla_solid_name" property

You can also tune the float format and precision of the output (see stla_float32_format and stla_float32_prec).