Slow loading of STL files

Feel free to ask any question here
Post Reply
anton_ship
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:36 pm

Slow loading of STL files

Post by anton_ship »

Hi,

I am trying to open 2Gb STL file with CloudCompare v2.11.3 (64-bit). And it is loading very slow - after 5 hours its only 80%.
My computer has - AMD Ryzen 32-core processor and 256Gb RAM. But I can see that CC is using only 2 CPUs (6 threads) and only 4 Gb of RAM.
If there is any setting or command which would help CC to use all available resources?

BR,
/Anton
daniel
Site Admin
Posts: 7717
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2010 7:34 am
Location: Grenoble, France
Contact:

Re: Slow loading of STL files

Post by daniel »

2 Gb STL!

It's probably a big mesh:
1) CloudCompare is not super strong with meshes (since it's CloudCompare and not Meshlab :p)
2) Worse: STL is a very dumb format with each triangle saved next to each other, with no information on the connectivity between triangles / shared vertices. Therefore CC has to find these common vertices and restore the connectivity.... And I guess on a very large mesh it can take a while...
Daniel, CloudCompare admin
anton_ship
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:36 pm

Re: Slow loading of STL files

Post by anton_ship »

Dear Daniel,

Yes, it is a result of a high-resolution CT scanning.

Very interesting, I didn't know that STL would be so bad for this.
I have tried with ASC (point format) instead. The loading time has reduced by 100 times!

Thanks for the perfect advice!

Best Regards,
/Anton
Post Reply