PlyTool-
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[edit] What is PlyTool?
PlyTool is an application for viewing and converting PLY geometry files. If you have CyDir, CyEdit or CySlice installed it will run as PlyTool+, which has an extended set of tools. This guide only covers the reduced functionality of the free PlyTool- application.
[edit] Input
With a correct installation, there are three ways of running PlyTool:
(1) Drag and drop a PLY file onto the PlyTool desktop icon.
(2) Double click the PlyTool Desktop icon and use the Input file selection window to load a PLY file.
(3) Double click on a PLY file.
When you run PlyTool from the Desktop icon it will, by default, open in your home directory. You can change this location by clicking on the icon with the right mouse button, then select Properties from the menu that pops up, click on the Shortcut tab, and edit the "Start in" field.
[edit] Info, View
Once the file is loaded (this may take a few moments for large files), the Info and View buttons are enabled.
Select the Info button to display a window showing face and points counts, and bounding box information for the loaded mesh.
Select the View button to have a look at the loaded mesh. Plyview is the program that is being used, running in a special demo mode with these hotkeys enabled:
? : show help menu LMB : rotate view MMB : pan view LMB+MMB : zoom view Home : recenter view 1 : fast wireframe 2 : wireframe 3 : wire shaded 4 : flat shaded 5 : smooth shaded 6 : color shaded 7 : chrome shaded r : flip normals q : quit
[edit] Scale, Translate, Rotate
To enlarge or shrink a mesh, type a scaling factor into the Scale field. For example, to double the dimensions of a mesh, type in 2.
You can use scaling to convert between units; click on the right arrow after the Scale field to bring up the units conversion window. Select the From and To units, and the appropriate scale is calculated for you. Click on the right arrow a second time if you want to hide the units conversion window.
Use the Translate options menu to change the origin of the mesh. The first, No, will leave the mesh where it is. The second, Cnt, will center the mesh on the origin. The third, Pos, will move the mesh so its all contained within the positive octant (i.e. all XYZ coordinates are positive).
To rotate a mesh during the file conversion, type the X, Y and Z angles into the three Rot fields.
Many applications consider the Z-axis to be up, and just as many work in a Y-axis up world. All of the headus applications considers Z to be up, so if you are moving meshes between them and Y-up applications, you'll need to rotate the mesh.
Click on the right arrow after the Rot fields to bring up the up-axis conversion window. Select the From and To axes, and the appropriate rotations are calculated for you. Click on the right arrow a second time if you want to hide the up-axis conversion window.
[edit] Output
Before converting the mesh you need to specify the output file. Click on the arrow after the Output text field to bring up a file selection window.
PlyTool is able to write out six types of polygonal mesh files; Wavefront OBJ, binary STL, DXF, 3D Studio (3DS), Inventor (IV), and VRML (WRL). Additionally, two sorts of point cloud outputs are available: IGES 106, and ASC. Select which sort of file you want to write from the Output Type window which will appear along side the file selection window.
Some of the output types have additional options:
- DXF - 3DFACE
- If enabled, 3DFACE entities will be saved instead of the POLYLINE default.
- WRL - Solid
- If enabled, the Solid flag in the WRL file is set. This is essentially back-face removal, which will speed up rendering, and on solid objects (i.e. those with no holes) there is no visible difference.
- IGES - Faces
- If enabled, iges entity type 124 (i.e. faces) will be output instead of the default of 106 (i.e. copious points).
In the file selection window, either double click on an existing file to overwrite, or type in a new filename and hit Enter to create it.
[edit] Convert
To perform the operations you have selected and to write out the new mesh file, click on the green Convert button.
The PlyTool Console window will appear; it shows you the output from the various command line programs that PlyTool uses to do all the real work. If there are any problems running the programs or reading or writing files, the errors will appear in this console window.
[edit] Additional Information
Support and additional information about PlyTool, and other applications for creating and working with polygonal meshes, can be found here:
- www.headus.com.au - headus 3D tools
- www.cyberware.com - Cyberware 3D scanners
The PLY geometry format was created by the Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory, and they publish information and software related to the PLY format.
- graphics.stanford.edu - Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory