Applications of Additive Manufacturing: Physical Modelling by Conversion of Various File Formats

Under the guidance of: Dr. Sanat Agrawal Presented by: Sachin Banerji Er. No.: 122405

M.Tech. in Manufacturing Technology Department of Mechanical Engineering Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology

Contents
Introduction Data Formats for Physical Modelling DEM File Format Surfer Grid File Format STL File Format VRML File Format References

Introduction
Physical models are being made with the help of

additive manufacturing (AM) machines

Terrain models are gaining importance

A CAD model is made and converted into STL file

format
STL file is manipulated in RP Magics software Model is grown.

Data Formats for Physical Modelling

Input file formats
DEM ASCII file format Surfer Grid file format

Output file formats

STL file format VRML file format

DEM File Format

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) represents

elevation data points

Represented in the form of a rectangular grid
Elevation points are at regularly spaced

horizontal positions

DEM File Format

DEM file format An example of DEM ASCII XYZ file is as follows:

ncols 6 nrows 4 xllcorner 478575 yllcorner 4399755 cellsize 30 NODATA_value -9999 42 45 7 3 45 44 78 55 5 50 40 31 60 51 41 89

56 8 41 91

8 59 13 36

Surfer Grid File Format

Surfer Grid file format:
Extensively used for surface gridding and contouring programs

in earth sciences.
Format is as follows:

DSAA ncolumns xmin ymin zmin el11 el12 el21 el22 . . elm1 elm2

mrows xmax ymax zmax el13 . . . el1n el23 . . . el2n

elm3 . . . elmn

STL File Format

STL stands for STereoLithography

Standard Tesselation Language

Standard Triangulation Language

De Facto standard in the additive

manufacturing (AM) industry

Represents a 3D model in the form of

triangles

STL File Format

An ASCII STL format looks like:

solid name facet normal ni nj outer loop vertex vertex vertex endloop endfacet endsolid name

nk

v1x v2x v3x

v1y v2y v3y

v1z v2z v3z

STL File Format

STL file format: An example STL file is as follows: solid output facet normal outer loop vertex vertex vertex endloop endfacet facet normal outer loop vertex vertex vertex endloop endfacet --endsolid 0.0 0.0 0.0 60.0 60.0 90.0 -15.0 3.0 4.0 -1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 90.0 60.0 90.0 -15.0 -15.0 4.0 -1.0 0.0 0.0

VRML File Format

VRML is a text file format
File

format for describing 3D interactive worlds and objects.

May be used in conjunction with the World

Wide Web.
Used

to create three-dimensional representations of complex scenes such as virtual reality presentations.

VRML File Format

References
Rase, W. D. (2002). Physical models of GIS objects by

rapid Prototyping.International Archives of Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 34(4), 430-433.
Modi, Y. K., D. J. De Beer, and Agrawal, S. (2011).

Physical modelling of terrain directly from surfer grid and ARC/INFO ASCII data formats. South African Journal of Industrial Engineering .Vol. 23(2). p.p. 230-241.
Agrawal et.al. (2013). Conversion of a GIS surface data

directly to a 3D STL part for terrain modelling. Accepted for publication.

Internet Spec List VRML 2.0 Modelling Language

Specifications. http://graphcomp.com/info/specs/sgi/vrml/spec/. Accessed October 2013.