Export linear extrusion as .ply file

Support
1

Hello,

I’ve had great luck exporting colored glyphs as .ply files for use in other software.

Now I’m trying to export some “cylinders” which are created using a linear extrusion, more specifically, like this:

disk = vtk.vtkDiskSource()
disk.SetCircumferentialResolution(128)
disk.SetRadialResolution(1)
disk.SetOuterRadius(2)
disk.SetInnerRadius(1)
pipe = vtk.vtkLinearExtrusionFilter()
pipe.SetInputConnection(disk.GetOutputPort())
pipe.SetExtrusionTypeToNormalExtrusion()
pipe.SetVector(0, 0, 1)
pipe.SetScaleFactor(5)
pipe.Update()

However, doing this, and writing it to a .ply file

writer = vtk.vtkPLYWriter()
writer.SetFileName('pipe.ply')
writer.SetInputConnection(pipe.GetOutputPort())
writer.Write()

only leaves me with 2 disks, one upper and one lower, and not the “pipe” that I’m seeing if I add this to a render window.

I tried the same thing, using a cylinder instead of my extruded disk, and here I had success.

Does anyone know what I am missing?

2

I’m clearly an idiot here, delete if you want.

The answer:

Add a triangle filter.

fil = vtk.vtkTriangleFilter()
fil.SetInputConnection(pipe.GetOutputPort())

and use this in the writer and it works fine.