Mesh Workbench/es

El entorno de mallas maneja mallas triangulares. Las mallas son un tipo especial de objeto 3D, compuesto por triángulos conectados por sus bordes y sus esquinas (también llamados vértices).



Un ejemplo de un objeto malla

Muchas aplicaciones 3D usan mallas como su objeto 3D básico, como sketchup, blender, maya o 3d studio max. Dado que las mallas son objetos muy simples, que contiene sólo los vértices (puntos), los bordes y las caras (triangulares), son muy fáciles de crear, modificar, dividir, estirar, y fácilmente se puede pasar de una aplicación a otra sin ningún tipo de pérdida. Además, ya que contienen datos muy sencillos, las aplicaciones 3D pueden manejar gran cantidad de mallas sin ningún problema. Por estas razones, las mallas son a menudo el tipo de objeto 3D de elección preferente en aplicaciones de tratamiento de películas, animación y creación de imágenes.

In the field of engineering, however, meshes present one big limitation: They are very dumb objects, only composed of points,lines and faces. They are only made of surfaces, and have no mass information, so they don't behave as solids. In a mesh there is no automatic way to know if a point is inside or outside the object. This means that all solid-based operations, such as addition or subtraction, are always a bit difficult to perform on meshes, and return errors often.

In FreeCAD, since it is an engineering application, we would obviously prefer to work with more intelligent types of 3D objects, that can carry more informations, such as mass, solid behaviour, or even custom parameters. The mesh module was first created to serve as a testbed, but to be able to read, manipulate and convert meshes is also highly important for FreeCAD. Very often, in your workflow, you will receive 3D data in mesh format. You will need to handle that data, analyse it to detect errors or other problems that prevent converting them to more intelligent objects, and finally, convert them to more intelligent objects, handled by the Part Module.

Using the mesh module
The mesh module has currently a very simple interface, all its functions are grouped in the Mesh menu entry. The most important operations you can currently do with meshes are:
 * [[Image:Mesh_Import_Mesh.svg|32px]] Import meshes in several file formats
 * [[Image:Mesh_Export_Mesh.svg|32px]] Export meshes in several file formats
 * [[Image:Mesh_Mesh_from_Shape.svg|32px]] Convert Part objects into meshes
 * [[Image:Mesh_Harmonize_Normals.svg|32px]] Harmonize normals
 * [[Image:Mesh_Flip_Normals.svg|32px]] Flip normals
 * [[Image:Mesh_boundary.svg|32px]] Close holes in meshes
 * [[Image:Mesh_Remove_Components.svg|32px]] Remove components of meshes
 * [[Image:Mesh_cut.svg|32px]] Cut meshes along a line

Analyse curvature, faces, and check if a mesh can be safely converted into a solid


 * [[Image:Mesh_Regular_Solid.svg|32px]] Regular solid... Create mesh primitives, like cubes, cylinders, cones, or spheres:
 * [[Image:Mesh_Cube.svg|32px]] Create a mesh cube
 * [[Image:Mesh_Cylinder.svg|32px]] Create a mesh cylinder
 * [[Image:Mesh_Cone.svg|32px]] Create a mesh cone
 * [[Image:Mesh_Sphere.svg|32px]] Create a mesh sphere
 * [[Image:Mesh_Ellipsoid.svg|32px]] Create a mesh ellipsoid
 * [[Image:Mesh_Torus.svg|32px]] Create a mesh torus


 * Union, subtract and intersect meshes

These are only some of the basic operations currently present in the Mesh module interface. But the FreeCAD meshes can also be handled in many more ways by scripting.