I would like to import data from an STL file of a 3D object to MATLAB and create a 2D contour plot of it. Does anyone have any ideas about this? Thanks!

I am trying to create a contour plot showing the thickness of this odd shaped 3D body similar to a topography map. If I had a matrix of x and y coordinates with the thickness at those locations (not just height but thickness) then I could create a contour plot. I do not know how to import the STL to MATLAB however and extract this information from it. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/22409-stl-file-reader

Answer 2

[Ahmet Cecen]

STL files have a very specific format you can exploit to gather your data automatically. Try using "textscan" followed by "strsplit" to get the x, y, z coordinates of the vertices.

[Edgar Crassier]

Could I get more information on this method? I do not understand how to extract the vertices variable into separate x,y and z coordinates.