CGAL users discussion list

[Michael Hull <>]

Hello!

I have been reading through the CGAL documentation, and it looks like an amazing project.

Unfortunately; I am having some trouble getting what I want out; so before I write some hacky code; I thought I'd ask here.

I basically want to take a set of points, (without normals), then use alpha shapes to find a mesh over these points (since the shame has concavities), then convert this shape into PLY file format.

I looked through the examples, and found something similar loading a bunny from a set of points into an alpha shape; which gives me access to the vertices or facets, but at this point I got confused about what exactly a triangulation is, how it compares to a Surface, and how I access it from my Alpha_Shape_3 object.

If someone could shed some light on this, I'd be very grateful!

Also, is there a writer to PLY that exists already, before I write my own?

Many thanks in advance, and for work on what looks like a great package.

Mike

P.S. I looked at the tutorial section, and some of the links are broken. I think for beginners 'lightweighter' overview/introductory material is very useful, since it can be difficult to get a feeling of how all the components fit together, especially if you  are not a C++ template guru :)