Loading a very detailed triangle mesh

[username_j]

Greetings,

I have a fairly complicated triangle mesh that I wish to have converted into any of the widely accepted layout formats (e.g. GDSII or Gerber).

The mesh contains upwards of 10,000,000 triangles, many of them sharing vertices. I have this mesh in the format (Vertices, Faces) and also readily converted to (x1,y1,x2,y2,x3,y3).

I have attempted to code my own converter (in MATLAB) to DXF but then found out that the vertex number is stored in a paltry "short" type (2 bytes) so DXF is immediately ruled out by the self-imposed maximum number of vertices. If there was a software that "broke" the rules and stored vertex numbers in a larger format, then DXF could be used (e.g. ACE 3000 does not accept a DXF file that exceeds the maximum number of vertices imposed by the DXF format).

I have tried various open source tools (e.g. Clipper) but it does not handle a geometry with multiple closed polygons. It handles a single contiguous structure, but fails the moment two (or more) contiguous structures are present. By fails I mean it improperly connects the two polygons rather than properly leave them distinct.

I am at my wits end in this regard as I'm relegated to using DW-2000 and its atrocious scripting. It takes many days (literally) to load this mesh into the program because one must load in small chunks lest the software run out of memory (I'm using a machine with 96GB of ram and DW-2000 tops out at 100MB in memory as it runs out of it - i.e. very poor memory management). Even automated (via the script) it's a nightmare.

If anyone knows of a commercial software that can help me in this regard, I would really appreciate it!

[support]

Hello.
Unfortunately the "maximum number of vertices" issue is common for CAD software. As a possible solution we can suggest splitting the single mesh to a set of lesser meshes and export to DXF.

Alexander.