CloudCompare forum

Hello,

I have an STL File (meshed) which I am importing into Inventor.
The inventor scale and measurements are being displayed correctly.

I need to model this file/part using an un-meshed version in Inventor.
Therefore I have exported from CloudCompare the STL file into an e57, I have then imported this E57 file into Recap, and from Recap I have created an RCS file (I also tried RCP).

I have imported the RCS (and RCP) cloud points into Inventor but the Scaling is now incorrect. It seems the scale are off inconsistently and by different factors.

Any ideas / suggestions?
Other path to go from STL to cloud point for Inventor?

Thanks you guys

CloudCompare reads (and exports) the coordinates exactly as what they are stored in the source file.

Maybe Inventor (or another tool) is making some assumptions on the units and changes the scale based on that? You can check in CloudCompare, once you load the STL file, if the scale is consistent with what Inventor displays? (you have the white ruler in the bottom right part of the screen that can give you a hint, or you can use the 'Point picking' tool to pick 2 points and check their relative distance.

Hi Daniel,

I tried picking points in Clod Compare and those did not match the STL file in Inventor.

I know the STL - Inventor file scale is correct because I made some physical check with the part.

I am at a lost on why this is happening in Cloud Compare or Recap.

Do you have other suggestion to go from STL to a cloud point and bypassing at least Recap?

Thanks

Well, I can guarantee you that CloudCompare will never change the coordinates of vertices when read from an STL file. Maybe there are some export options in Inventor to control that?

Anyway, you can either export directly the vertices of the mesh to a point cloud file (if it's dense enough). Or you can sample points on the mesh (with 'Edit > Mesh > Sample points') to get a dense cloud that you can save as a file.