While the amount you can truly edit a mesh body is limited, it does give you great options for utilizing mesh data in standard SOLIDWORKS parts or assemblies.
In SOLIDWORKS 2018, mesh modeling functionality was added to all versions to allow some utilization of mesh files.
These file types generally save geometry as a series of connected triangles (also known as tessellations) and usually cannot be edited by standard SWX features.Ĭapabilities: Reference vertices of mesh triangles, boolean operations (add/subtract/common), extract primitive surfaces and curvesĬapabilities: Edit/clean-up mesh, Extract organic or prismatic surfaces and curves, perform deviation analysisĪvailability: Separately purchased SOLIDWORKS Add-inĬapabilities: Create mesh from Scan Data, Advanced mesh editing and clean-up tools, Advanced surface and curve extraction, perform deviation analysis
Mesh data is saved in a variety of file formats, the most common being STL, though you may have run across a number of others (.obj. Have you ever received an STL file from a customer or colleague and been asked to work with it in SOLIDWORKS? Or have you ever received data from a 3D scanner? If so, then you have probably been left wondering, "How do I work on this in SOLIDWORKS and why can I not use my regular tools and features?" In today’s article, we are going to look at three different tool sets that can be used to work with mesh data.