Mesh to parametric model

Hi,

Is there any way to convert mesh geometries to a (nurbs or solid) cylinder model that I can use for example to define or find the centerline of the attached sample model? Note, that this should be one shape, but there are two joint meshes here.

I know it’s a simple example, but It’d be nice if there were a scalable solution, meaning it’d be applicable for slightly different shapes as well (mostly pipes with more complex paths).

Cheers!
mesh_sample_.gh (4.8 KB)

Based on a quick look on your mesh, it’s extremely difficult to reconstruct the center path.
I could imagine getting the center points of those cross-sections that are aligned with XY planes. But the problem is that the pipe is rotating 3-Dimensionally.

How many pipes are we talking about ?

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In the meantime, I uploaded a simpler example, which perhaps would be enough to start with. I have way too many pipes to rebuild manually :confused:

Before jumping into coding and scripting,
I suggest you to ask the person who gave you this model, who is very likely to be working in Revit, to simply export the Pipe center lines for you.
That would save everyone’s time.

Here is how it is done in Revit:

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I will definitely ask them, but you made me wondering… In case of a data received from a scan as a pointcloud, do you believe that it is possible to get an acceptable result scripting and coding?

I was trying to determine the centerpoints of the straight sections only, which works with the “Circle Fit” component after grouping the vertexes, but neither this grouping nor the centerpoint’s position is satisfying:

  • successful grouping depends a lot on the shape and its dimensions (cannot apply randomly with the same tolerance)
  • the circles fitted are approximate ones due to the inaccuracies of the meshes. This leads to the issue, that two centerlines eventually don’t intersect each other, thus I can’t determine the breakpoint of the lines. Anyway, I’ll keep trying. :slight_smile:

I own a handheld Artec Leo and Eva 3D scanner. Artec Studio 16 is the software used to create meshes out of scan data. There is a command to retrieve CAD features such as cylinders, cones, tori, spheres, plane and even some freeform shapes. A special segment selection command has been added recently which allows to select a segment. Based on a treshold the software finds a certain segment. A huge timesaver.