How to generate point cloud information for a modelled surface.

[gmali]

Am required to generate point cloud information for any given surface. The generated data should contain horizontal angle, vertical angle and radial distance of each point on the surface from a reference point. is this feasible in Creo.

[gmali]

for example - mapping this spherical surface

[dschenken]

The easist method is to generate an STL file and look at the vertex coordinates for the triangle elements. Changing them from XYZ coordinates is pretty easy and can be done in Excel VBA or any number of general purpose languages as can changing the coordinate system offset.

Check STL (file format) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and The StL Format | fabbers.com

All you need is to extract all the lines that start with "vertex."

If there aren't too many vertices, you can open the file in Excel and work it right from the spreadsheet.

[gmali]

Thank you David.

What are the steps to be followed after the .stl file is made to get the vertex data into Excel. Is the model orgin used as a reference for this coordinates.