Rhino is still trying to insert the model since 30 minutes… I had to close Rhino with the Task manager now. Looks like the PLY file requires a lot of time for reading into Rhino, so I will probably just open the 3dm file instead.
The 3d scans (STL) were sent to me by a customer. I simply import them in Rhino and clean up the unnecessary geometry. Unfortunately, the ! _ReduceMesh is incapable of dealing with this particular dense mesh. Rhino simply crashes after it reaches about 14% of remeshing (takes more than two hours to reach that percentage).
Don’t want to complain but the client might just have exported at too high resolution and likely the tools in their post processing software are more capable in reducing the mesh poly count than what Rhino can do at the moment. Also, you might want to update to Rhino 8
I just made a 21 M polygon model (duplicated the Standford Dragon in a 3x3 matrix, joined, made two copies of the result and joined those three together). Moving that mesh takes about 13 seconds since Rhino has to write it to file for EVERY move or rotation. That just takes time. Saving that file to disk is an even slower process. But it spins at 44fps on a fullhd screen on my laptop with a rtx 2070 card.
That way the inserted file is listed in the Layer tab as it’s own container with it’s own layers underneath. Nice and clean, so I can turn them on and off at will.
Now when I move the inserted file (It is now a block as Martin stated) it moves and rotates in 0.2 seconds, as the only thing the current Rhino file cares about is it’s location. It does not have to write the transformed mesh into the file every time. Smooth, fast and easy to handle.
Testmaxspeed now also gave me 44 fps, so no speed lost there either.
Nice to hear that. I will try with the “Linked” option this time. Hopefully that will resolve my problem, because the “Embedded” option literally froze my Windows for half an hour.
Software for 3d scan data is much more optimized for dense meshes than Rhino, no doubt about that. Currently, I wait more than 10 minutes for Rhino 7 to export the mesh model as OBJ file. I intend to import the latter into the 14-day trial version of Z-Brush, which I just downloaded. Z-Brush has a tool for reducing mesh count.
Edit:
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Rhino 7 Failed to Save
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Failed to save as C:\Tesla Model 3\M3HP Front bumper Installed OBJ.obj.
The file writing plug-in failed.
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OK
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Good luck. The file I inserted is 870 MB, so it makes sense to keep it out of the master file. No need to waste time on saving that into the file every time you save it.
Do keep in mind that the block it self is an “object” that lives on on of the layers in the file you insert it into, so I often make a Layer that I cal Xref (external reference) and then I move the inserted file (block) to that layer, so I know where it is.
When you insert a file it always ends up on the active Layer in the rhino file. This logic usually takes some time to get used to.
Rhino has this too, and it is not half bad. ReduceMesh is the command. But it can take a very long time on a huge mesh (but you get a progress counter, so you are not left in the dark)
Oh, and in case you missed it, I always make Rhino files that I reference in. It is much better and smoother down the line, than to use different file formats.
Yeah, I use this tool quite often. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Rhino crashed at 14% progress, my Windows froze and I have been forced to restart my PC.
Z-Brush handles meshes much easier than Rhino, so this is my last hope to reduce the mesh. If I don’t, I will have to buy a new PC…
With ZB Decimation Master [in the plugins manu] you should have no problem reducing to 20% without any visible loss of details. Possibly you can go down to 10% [ from your initial 30 + mil to 3.something mil] it may take some time to analyze the large mesh, but then you can try different reduction levels with re analyzing.
There likely be some cleaning steps too, that are easer done in ZB before sending the .obj to Rhino.
The funny thing is that the OBJ file exported from Rhino is 11,6 GB big (the Rhino file is 1,3 GB) and Z-Brush can’t import it due to an insufficient system memory… Not sure why the OBJ file format is taking so much space.
EDIT: Z-Brush only supports imported meshes up to 10 million polygons, whereas my model is a little bit over 28 million polygons.
You can also try Atangeo Balancer nPro https://www.atangeo.com/
It can handle very large models, and it has a tolerance value representing the deviation of the reduced model to the original. It yields a result very similar to the curvature based decimation in Geomagic.
I tried the free 14-day evaluation version of Z-Brush. It has a limitation of up to 10 million polygons. No idea whether the full paid version supports larger files.
Thanks! I just downloaded the demo and seems like it works pretty well. Do you know whether the program could be purchased successfully nowadays? Their last forum post is from 2021.
By the way, this is also linked to the fact that ‘you’ are writing the geometry in a new location when you move the object, so Rhino stores the old version of the object in the undo list. This is another reason why using linked files is much more efficient since the undo just needs to record the movement of the block, not the new geometry.
Try to run reducemesh of the scan on the other computer you mentioned, the one with 64GB ram. It should crunch through.
Do note that if you want the best quality of a highly reduce mesh, it is better to reduce to 50% then reduce that to 50% and that to 50% instead of going directly to 12,5%.
Good luck!
Last night I imported the heavy model as a linked reference, exactly the way you showed in your screen-shot. It was a day and night difference, with very nice viewport performance. My Rhino 7 was able to handle multiple adjustments of the position with ease.
However, the real problem started once I made a mirrored copy of the block instance, in order to be able to use it as a guide to position the original in a symmetrical way. This is when I make many tiny adjustments of the position. I will probably end up getting a new PC. My current one is perfectly fine for NURBS modeling of an entire car and components inside, but STL meshes are too big if a burden.
Thank you all for your time and willingness to help me out!
