Every few months I receive the following question: "I have a mesh / set of facet data / triangle list and would like to bring this into my ACIS application. Can I make ACIS ENTITYs out of these triangles?"
The short answer is that ACIS has no Firefox functionality to convert a large set of mesh data into ENTITYs ACIS can use.
The long answer is that there are a couple possible workflows:
1) For small sets of data, the app can create one FACE per triangle, and then attempt to stitch these together. This is a very topologically-heavy approach.
2) For 2.5D apps (such as a fixed axis laser scanner), logic can be written to detect large areas of similar curvature and combine these triangles together. This approach can also then detect "hard" edges (over a certain threshold angle) and denote EDGEs. This approach requires considerably more time and effort, but could result in better data for the application.
One important note: Even with an advanced mesh processor, there is no guarantee that a mesh converted into ACIS ENTITYs will have the same topological information that the originating model had (eg: Take CAD model -> export mesh -> convert mesh back to CAD).
Hope this helps!
