STL mesh re-triangulation in rapid prototyping manufacturing

摘要

STL (stereo lithography) format is the de facto file for rapid prototyping manufacturing. However, it suffers from its drawback in a high degree of redundant vertices. Furthermore, errors in the tessellation process cause inconsistency and incompleteness in the STL file. The purpose of this paper is to present how to simplify STL triangular mesh and get its optimized shape for rapid prototyping manufacturing. The processes for the STL mesh re-triangulation can be set to mesh deletion and mesh reconstruction. In the mesh deletion process, two kinds of weighted value algorithms are used for determining the suitable value of STL meshes deleted. In the process of STL mesh reconstruction, genetic algorithm with its fitness functions is implemented for the optimization of the STL meshes. Two cases of the STL meshes re-triangulation are shown to prove the processes presented in this paper are in good results.