POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.advanced-users : Conversion from STEP to Pov Server Time
31 Oct 2024 23:27:40 EDT (-0400)
  Conversion from STEP to Pov (Message 1 to 2 of 2)  
From: bagger
Subject: Conversion from STEP to Pov
Date: 1 Jul 2010 04:35:01
Message: <web.4c2c521dbfa07237b5bb38ea0@news.povray.org>
I've been looking for quit some time for a tool that converts Pro/Engineer files
or SolidWorks files directly to Pov files. Either that or one which converts the
STEP files to Pov files.
I tried a number of tools: CrossRoads, 3D Object Converter but they all don't
support "normal" STEP files.

Anyone any experience with a tool that does make that possible?


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Conversion from STEP to Pov
Date: 6 Jul 2010 05:24:12
Message: <4c32f63c$1@news.povray.org>
> I've been looking for quit some time for a tool that converts Pro/Engineer 
> files
> or SolidWorks files directly to Pov files. Either that or one which 
> converts the
> STEP files to Pov files.
> I tried a number of tools: CrossRoads, 3D Object Converter but they all 
> don't
> support "normal" STEP files.

The issue is that STEP stores the surfaces as mathematical descriptions, not 
a triangle mesh.  In theory it should be possible to directly convert the 
STEP to POV primitives and retain the perfect mathematical precision, but I 
guess nobody has written this yet.  I started to look into it but the STEP 
format is pretty complicated.  This would be the best way of using POV to 
render 3D CAD files.

> Anyone any experience with a tool that does make that possible?

Export them from Pro/E as an slp file, then use slp2pov.


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