## How do I compute the surface & volume of a large amount of STL files?

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Please, how do I compute the surface & volume of a large amount of STL files ?

I have over 3000 STL files, and I want to know their respective volumes and surfaces. I will use this data to be able to identify the biggest part, the one with the biggest surface, etc.

I found that the fine Admesh (included in openscad, as far as I know) software that can compute the volume via command-line (powershell) and with some text editing I can get the volumes for all of these parts (needing some patience), but I didn't find any similar tool for the surface.

The best tool would output such thing as:

input.stl - 75.554mm2 - 45.547mm3

I'm not sure this post is adequate in here, but anyway, thanks.

@esoterik I already talked about it in my post. – 42Z0GqNNz – 2018-11-29T20:51:28.857

2Depending on how comfortable you are with programming, calculating the surface is pretty easy. Simply sum the area of all the triangles in the file. – Tom van der Zanden – 2018-04-23T13:41:13.863

Well, the fact is that I am not comfortable with programming. I am learning a lot in computer science in general, but my programming skills are limited to (very) simple scripts like \$ cp -r \some\folder \some\destination\ ; shutdown.

Not that I wouldn't like to learn about, but I don't really have the time… yet, at least. – 42Z0GqNNz – 2018-04-24T08:12:42.570

if you can find the weight (aka filament use estimate) and the volume, can you computer surface? idk – dandavis – 2018-04-28T10:25:52.360

@dandavis I don't understand what do you mean. I am searching for the surface of the parts, which is independent from the volume (volume and weight being proportionals, tighten by density). i.e.: these parts have a much higher surface over volume ratio than this one.

– 42Z0GqNNz – 2018-05-11T12:41:30.810

1admesh -c will give you a summary that includes volume, you colud grep for the line/value after "volume : " – esoterik – 2018-06-26T00:09:16.500

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You could use the Python console of FreeCAD. Issuing the following commands

FreeCAD.ActiveDocument.ActiveObject.Shape.Area