Blenbridge
Within a modeling application such as Blender, objects are created from insubstantial faces, each having its own defined boundaries, but zero thickness. When artfully arranged and rendered, such objects can rival photography for detail, clarity, and believability. The possibilities are literally endless, and endlessly impressive.
Blender holds a description of the physical details of objects in a scene within a mesh block format. When it becomes desirable to export a mesh object, Blender's export scripts perform the operation. Such formats as .ply, obj, and .stl may differ in the extent to which they can convey the nuances of a scene, but as far as basic mesh characteristics are concerned, their purpose is merely to describe the phyiscal attributes so that the analyzing functions in another application can understand the geometry and depict it.
In the genre of file format converters, Blenbridge is a little different from any other. It is meant to work solely with non-manifold mesh. Mesh can be non-manifold in various ways, but the defect of current interest is the presence of internal faces. By co-locating the vertices of surface faces with those of internal faces, an object can be constructed which carries the implication of an assembly of solid blocks, such as the elements making up finite element mesh. Such a ruse is only possible because Blender is partially tolerant of non-manifold meshes of the necessary type. The Blender .ply export script is also key, in that it writes manifold and non-manifold mesh with equal disinterest.
Blenbridge has algorithms to interpret a certain type of non-manifold .ply file as representing a finite element mesh, and then to create it. And it can also translate finite element mesh written in the .vtk format into .ply format, readable by Blender. Thus it forms a bridge between the tenuous faces of 3D modeling objects and the solidly defined volumetric elements of unstructured grid mesh.
Tutorials
Documentation
Lifted
Blender holds a description of the physical details of objects in a scene within a mesh block format. When it becomes desirable to export a mesh object, Blender's export scripts perform the operation. Such formats as .ply, obj, and .stl may differ in the extent to which they can convey the nuances of a scene, but as far as basic mesh characteristics are concerned, their purpose is merely to describe the phyiscal attributes so that the analyzing functions in another application can understand the geometry and depict it.
In the genre of file format converters, Blenbridge is a little different from any other. It is meant to work solely with non-manifold mesh. Mesh can be non-manifold in various ways, but the defect of current interest is the presence of internal faces. By co-locating the vertices of surface faces with those of internal faces, an object can be constructed which carries the implication of an assembly of solid blocks, such as the elements making up finite element mesh. Such a ruse is only possible because Blender is partially tolerant of non-manifold meshes of the necessary type. The Blender .ply export script is also key, in that it writes manifold and non-manifold mesh with equal disinterest.
Blenbridge has algorithms to interpret a certain type of non-manifold .ply file as representing a finite element mesh, and then to create it. And it can also translate finite element mesh written in the .vtk format into .ply format, readable by Blender. Thus it forms a bridge between the tenuous faces of 3D modeling objects and the solidly defined volumetric elements of unstructured grid mesh.
Tutorials
Documentation
Lifted
Last updated 7 October 18