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Export STL without Square Holes

Wes_Tomer
12-Amethyst

Export STL without Square Holes

Hello,

 

To prevent display lag in AR on the HoloLens, I often need reduce the number of polygons (facets) of a particular model. When I load the final PVZ into Vuforia Studio I always run the CAD optimizer, but sometimes this still results in too many polygons. So before exporting as a PVZ from Creo Parametric, I replace especially complex parts (lots of curves) with STL copies. When I export a part as an STL I can adjust the parameters to create a very fine detailed mesh of polygons, or a very low quality where all of the round geometry is represented by squares. I would like to preserve the geometry of round items so that they have at least 6 or more sides (not 4) -- however I want to simplify the rest of the part much more dramatically. Is there a trick to get the best of both worlds?

 

One time consuming method to do this is to extrude a polygon (6 or more sides) in the place of every circle (whether adding or subtracting material) -- this prevents exporting to STL from over-simplifying a circle into a square -- but it allows me to highly optimize all of the other geometry. Is there a better way to do this? I can't afford to use my time consuming method on parts that have lots of holes with countersinks and circular features. Please see attached - polygon-reduction.jpg

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

I solved my problem:

 

Here's the hack:

  1. Open the Gear_Case.prt in Creo Parametric & export as a PVZ
  2. Import the PVZ into Vuforia Studio and run CAD optimizer
  3. Navigate to the Gear_Case_High.pvz in your folder browser
    1. C:\Users\****\Documents\VuforiaStudio\Projects\****\src\phone\resources\Uploaded
  4. Copy this file, and open it in Creo Parametric as a new part. Save the part.
  5. Insert the part into your Creo Parametric assembly (to replace the more complex one).
  6. You won't have much to constrain to -- so just use simplified reps to exclude the complex gear-case.
  7. Export the assembly as a PVZ
  8. Import into Vuforia Studio and run CAD optimizer
  9. You will be able to use the ****_Low.pvz file to reduce polygon count WHILE still retaining a nice level of detail for all round parts for the gear_case

 

How's that? 🙂

Did anyone understand all that? I hope it's helpful to someone. What I'm doing is making selective use of the Vuforia Studio CAD optimizer. It would be nice if this sort of thing were built-in, but it's a good hack.

 

p.s.

For everyone who came to this topic so they could export a STL without square holes, (and doesn't care about all the rest) just open the part in Creo, then Save As -> Save a Copy -> Stereolithography (STL) file type + check the box to customize export. Click Apply to see what it will look like. You can change the parameters, and hit Apply again until you like what you see.

View solution in original post

1 REPLY 1

I solved my problem:

 

Here's the hack:

  1. Open the Gear_Case.prt in Creo Parametric & export as a PVZ
  2. Import the PVZ into Vuforia Studio and run CAD optimizer
  3. Navigate to the Gear_Case_High.pvz in your folder browser
    1. C:\Users\****\Documents\VuforiaStudio\Projects\****\src\phone\resources\Uploaded
  4. Copy this file, and open it in Creo Parametric as a new part. Save the part.
  5. Insert the part into your Creo Parametric assembly (to replace the more complex one).
  6. You won't have much to constrain to -- so just use simplified reps to exclude the complex gear-case.
  7. Export the assembly as a PVZ
  8. Import into Vuforia Studio and run CAD optimizer
  9. You will be able to use the ****_Low.pvz file to reduce polygon count WHILE still retaining a nice level of detail for all round parts for the gear_case

 

How's that? 🙂

Did anyone understand all that? I hope it's helpful to someone. What I'm doing is making selective use of the Vuforia Studio CAD optimizer. It would be nice if this sort of thing were built-in, but it's a good hack.

 

p.s.

For everyone who came to this topic so they could export a STL without square holes, (and doesn't care about all the rest) just open the part in Creo, then Save As -> Save a Copy -> Stereolithography (STL) file type + check the box to customize export. Click Apply to see what it will look like. You can change the parameters, and hit Apply again until you like what you see.

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