PLY Help

[jdw5076]

I have a ply file that I found off the internet. It is a scan of a rabbit from Stanford/Georgia Tech (http://lodbook.com/models/). I cannot open it in SolidWorks but I can open it in an open source program called MeshLab. I want this scan to be a complete solid so I can open it up in SolidWorks, scale it to the size I want, then save it to an STL file so I can print it on a 3D Printer. I do not know anything about MeshLab or how to get the PLY file to where I need it to be. I cannot attach the file because its too big. But you can get it from http://lodbook.com/models/and click on the second link under Stanford Bunny (bunny.tar.gz at Georgia Tech)

 

[DocSamson]

As far as I can tell, MeshLab can export the Stanford Bunny directly as an DXF, but it will be so large that SolidWorks will crash upon opening it (it crashed my SolidWorks).

The brute force method would be to have MeshLab export the Stanford Bunny as a 3D Studio file (*.3ds), then to find some other software to convert it into a SolidWorks file.

As an aside, the Stl file generated by MeshLab CAN be opened by SolidWorks, but it's unworkable after that. In other words, it cannot be scaled.

Good luck!

Doc Samson