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Mesh to Points turns a mesh into a point cloud. Use it when the next step needs points instead of triangles: the point cloud tools of the Points tab, or a program that reads point clouds. The cloud holds either the vertices of the mesh, or a point cover: points sampled over the whole surface so densely that a ball of the radius you set cannot pass between them.
Convert a mesh to points
- Select one or more meshes in the Scene tree.
- Click Mesh Edit › Mesh to Points. The Mesh to Points panel opens.
- Choose the options (see the table below).
- Click Convert (or press Enter).
| Option | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Save Normals | Gives every point a normal: the normals of the mesh vertices, and their interpolation in the points sampled between them. Points with normals are shaded like a surface. | On |
| Point Cover | Samples the whole surface instead of taking the vertices of the mesh alone. | Off |
| Blocked Ball Radius | Shown only with Point Cover. Every point of the surface has a point of the cloud within this distance, so no ball of this radius can pass through the cloud. A smaller radius gives more points. | Half the average edge length of the mesh |
What you get
Each selected mesh is replaced by a point cloud named after it plus Points (for example, fandisk Points), in the same place of the Scene tree. Objects nested in the mesh move into the new cloud, and the panel closes. To get the mesh back, use Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z on macOS). To keep the mesh as well, make a copy with Clone first.
The Information panel of the cloud shows the number of Points and whether the cloud has Point Normals.
Vertices only (Point Cover off)
The cloud has one point for each vertex of the mesh, and keeps the vertex colors of the mesh. The CAD part above has 6 475 vertices, so the cloud has 6 475 points. Where the mesh has large triangles, such as flat CAD faces, the points are far apart.
If the mesh has selected triangles, only the vertices inside the selection become points: a vertex counts when all triangles around it are selected, so vertices on the edge of the selection are left out. If no vertex is inside the selection, for example when only one triangle is selected, the whole mesh is converted.
Point cover (Point Cover on)
The cloud keeps all vertices of the mesh and adds points inside the triangles and on the edges wherever the vertices are farther apart than the Blocked Ball Radius allows. With the default radius of 0.054 mm (half of the 0.108 mm average edge length), the same part became a cloud of 24 727 points that covers the flat faces evenly.
The number of points grows fast as the radius gets smaller: half the radius gives about four times as many sampled points. In this mode the cloud does not take the vertex colors of the mesh. If the mesh has selected triangles, only the selected area is sampled.
Work with the cloud
The result is an ordinary point cloud object, so you continue on the Points tab. To make the cloud lighter, with evenly spaced points, use Sample Points. To build a new mesh from it, use Points to Mesh, or Scans to Mesh for several scans at once. To check the direction of the point normals, see Flip Normals for point clouds, and to save the cloud to a file, see Exporting objects.
