Windows 10 ships with 3D Builder, a Universal App that contains utility functions to prepare STL, OBJ, 3DS, and other files that represent geometries for 3D printing.The utility looks like this:In particular, they have triangle mesh functions there that:Detect when a mesh is not suitable for 3D printing;Repair so that the mesh isn't right it prepares it, by removing internal faces, closing holes in the outer surface, etc.;Simplify by removing redundant triangles, such as those found to be adjacent and co-planar; andPlane Cut, slicing a mesh through an arbitrarily positioned plane and filling in a surface on that plane to re-enclose the geometry, sometimes followed by a Detect and Repair.Every copy of Windows 8.1 and 10 has this utility at no additional cost. That says to me that the functions are well-known and as far as I've been able to test, reliable for virtually all inputs to the 3D printing use case. I used some of the messiest STL files I could find to prove this thing.Which algorithms did they use for those functions? Where are they found for a .NET/WPF/UWP environment?More to the point, did they expose the functions in an API I can use for a slightly dissimilar use case? In the builder the functions look like this:Simplify (the tractor top and sides have fewer facets):Slice, UI before processing:Slice, after processing and then one Simplify pass:
Which 3D algorithms does Windows 10's 3D Builder application use?
algorithm;3d;mesh;computational geometry