Elmer Discussion Forum

Is someone aware if there is a library somewhere that can generate a structured or unstructured mesh with 3D elements (e.g. tetrahedral) from a xyz point cloud?

Depending on the complexity, I would probably try the following:

Put the xyz into .ply format and import into Blender. Then construct the
surface mesh manually. Then export as .stl. Then let Elmer or Netgen
mesh it.

regards
Gary

Hi

If you have access to Matlab there is a command delaunay and delaunayn. As usual these use some free libraries, in this case Qhull, see http://www.qhull.org for details.

-Peter

Hello,

I found an interesting Blender plugin called Point Cloud Skinner (http://www.blendernation.com/2012/01/12 ... d-skinner/). As for Qhull, it seems to be also available in R (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ ... index.html) and Python (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Delny).

Thanks for the references!

--
Serge-Éti. Parent
Université Laval (Québec)
Canada

Gary,

Will Netgen or Elmer be able to generate the tetrahedrons inside the surface stl mesh created using Blender?

Thanks,

Serge-Éti.

Serge-Eti,

I can only speak for Blender 2.49b. The .stl which it exports is binary; it does not know how to
export ascii. Gmsh can read it though, and then output an ascii .stl which Elmer or Netgen can read.

regards,
Gary