- author
Roland Smith
The stltools module reads both text and binary STL files and creates STL objects. It also handles coordinate transforms and projections.
The scripts stl2pov, stl2ps and stl2pdf use this library to convert STL files to POV-ray meshes, PostScript and PDF files respectively.
These programs require Python 3.6 or later.
The releases from the “master” branch required numpy up to commit 93db6bd57c34c3c7cfb9456f1f88306fa3204f13. The code on the “pypy” branch does not use numpy. This was merged into “master” on 2021-03-13.
Apart from stl2pdf, which uses cairo, the other scripts have no dependencies outside the standard library.
This is a refactoring of the C version 2.x. Version 2 was too slow, basically because it tried to do too much. This version is a straight translator. However, the speed of the method to create a POV-ray mesh2 object was much improved. It produces a POV-ray mesh or mesh2 declaration that you can use in your scenes. N.B.: you still have to instantiate the mesh as an object, give it material properties, define a light and a camera &c.:
usage: stl2pov.py [-h] [-2,--mesh2] [-v] [--log {debug,info,warning,error}]
[file [file ...]]
Program for converting an STL file into a POV-ray mesh or mesh2.
positional arguments:
file one or more file names
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-2,--mesh2 generate a mesh2 object (slow on big files)
-v, --version show program's version number and exit
--log {debug,info,warning,error}
logging level (defaults to 'warning')Version 4 marked the switch to Python 3 and an internal reworking of the code. Among other things, the logging module is now used.
Up to version 5, stl2pov had used the object name in the STL file as the identifier for the mesh. But it was pointed out to me that often the object name often isn't a valid identifier. So in version 5, the object name is checked if it would be a valid identifier. If not, a valid identifier is generated based on the object name. If the object name is empty, the identifier is based on the filename.
This is a new script that produces a view of the STL object looking down parallel to the positive Z-axis on the centre of the object. Rotating the object is supported. Currently the output uses only grayscale and a very simple shading algorithm. It does not draw facets that point away from the viewer. The remaining facets are sorted back to front by average depth of their vertices. The removal of completely occluded surfaces has been tested and dropped as too expensive. Shadows and more sophisticated lighting effects are not planned, but patches are welcome.:
usage: stl2ps.py [-h] [--log {debug,info,warning,error}] [-c CANVAS_SIZE]
[-f FG] [-b BG] [-o OUTFILE] [-x X] [-y Y] [-z Z]
file
Program for converting a view of an STL file into a PostScript file. Using the
-x, -y and -z options you can rotate the object around these axis. Subsequent
rotations will be applied in the order they are given on the command line.
Note that the object will be automatically centered and scaled to fit in the
picture.
positional arguments:
file name of the file to process
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--log {debug,info,warning,error}
logging level (defaults to 'warning')
-c CANVAS_SIZE, --canvas CANVAS_SIZE
canvas size, defaults to 200 PostScript points
-f FG, --foreground FG
foreground color in 6-digit hexdecimal RGB (default
E6E6E6)
-b BG, --background BG
background color in 6-digit hexdecimal RGB (default
white FFFFFF)
-o OUTFILE, --output OUTFILE
output file name
-x X rotation around X axis in degrees
-y Y rotation around Y axis in degrees
-z Z rotation around Z axis in degreesThis is basically a variant of stl2ps using the cairo library to generate PDF output directly. It requires the cairo library and its Python binding.:
usage: stl2pdf.py [-h] [--log {debug,info,warning,error}] [-c CANVAS_SIZE]
[-f FG] [-b BG] [-o OUTFILE] [-x X] [-y Y] [-z Z]
file
Program for converting a view of an STL file into a PDF file. Using the -x, -y
and -z options you can rotate the object around these axis. Subsequent
rotations will be applied in the order they are given on the command line.
Note that the object will be automatically centered and scaled to fit in the
picture.
positional arguments:
file name of the file to process
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--log {debug,info,warning,error}
logging level (defaults to 'warning')
-c CANVAS_SIZE, --canvas CANVAS_SIZE
canvas size, defaults to 200 PostScript points
-f FG, --foreground FG
foreground color in 6-digit hexdecimal RGB (default
E6E6E6)
-b BG, --background BG
background color in 6-digit hexdecimal RGB (default
FFFFFF)
-o OUTFILE, --output OUTFILE
output file name
-x X rotation around X axis in degrees
-y Y rotation around Y axis in degrees
-z Z rotation around X axis in degreesThis program prints some information about the STL file, like the name of the object, its bounding box and the number of facets. Optionally it can also list an STL text version of the file. This way stlinfo can be used to convert a binary STL file to a text version.:
usage: stlinfo.py [-h] [-t] [-b] [-v] [--log {debug,info,warning,error}]
[file [file ...]]
Read an STL file and print information about the object. Optionally print a
text representation of the object. It can also write a binary STL version of
the object.
positional arguments:
file one or more file names
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-t, --text print text representation of the file
-b, --binary write binary representation of the file
-v, --version show program's version number and exit
--log {debug,info,warning,error}
logging level (defaults to 'warning')It is not necessary to install these scripts. You should be able to run the scripts from the stltools directory.
Run the following command to install the scripts.
> python3 setup.py installThe scripts are install as a normal user, root or administrator privileges are not required.
The scripts are installed as self-contained executable Python zip archives.