mesh_rs

mesh_rs is a powerful and versatile command-line interface (CLI) tool designed for analyzing and manipulating 3D mesh files. Built with Rust, it offers high-performance processing for 3D printing enthusiasts and professionals who need to inspect or modify their model files directly from the terminal.

Features

• Format Detection: Automatically detects file formats based on content or extension.
• Geometric Analysis:
  • Diagonal: Calculate the bounding box diagonal to understand the scale of the object.
  • Volume: Compute the signed volume of the mesh (assumes watertight/manifold meshes).
  • Triangle Count: Quickly get the total number of faces in the model.
  • Comprehensive Stats: View all metrics (volume, diagonal, triangle count) in a single summary.
• Mesh Manipulation:
  • Scaling: Uniformly scale meshes to a specific target diagonal length. Useful for normalizing object sizes for printing.

Supported Formats

Currently, mesh_rs supports the following 3D file formats:

• STL (Stereolithography) - Binary and ASCII
• OBJ (Wavefront)

Installation

Ensure you have Rust and Cargo installed on your system.

# Clone the repository
git clone git@github.com:VinukaThejana/mesh_rs.git 

# Navigate to the project directory
cd mesh_rs

# Build the project
cargo build --release

# (Optional) Install globally
cargo install --path .

Usage

The general syntax is:

mesh_rs <INPUT_FILE> <COMMAND> [ARGS]

Commands

1. Get Mesh Statistics

View comprehensive details including file format, triangle count, diagonal size, and volume.

mesh_rs model.stl stats

2. Calculate Volume

Get the volume of the mesh in cubic units (usually mm³).

mesh_rs model.obj volume

3. Get Bounding Box Diagonal

Measure the diagonal length of the mesh's bounding box.

mesh_rs input.stl diagonal

4. Count Triangles

Get the total number of triangular faces.

mesh_rs input.obj triangles

5. Scale a Mesh

Resize a mesh so its bounding box diagonal matches a specific length.

# Scale 'input.stl' to have a diagonal of 100 units
mesh_rs input.stl scale 100

# Scale and save to a specific output file
mesh_rs input.obj scale 150 --output scaled_model.obj

Roadmap & Future Goals

We aim to make mesh_rs the go-to CLI for 3D model analysis. Future plans include:

• More Formats: Support for PLY, 3MF, and FBX.
• Mesh Repair: Basic repair tools for non-manifold edges and holes.
• Slicing Preview: Generate simple cross-section previews in the terminal.
• Batch Processing: Analyze or convert multiple files in a directory at once.
• Metadata Inspection: Read and display metadata from supported formats.

License

MIT License