Describing Multiple Cubes using a Single Struct

If I use patch to draw two cubes like this:

format compact h(1) = axes('Position',[0.2 0.2 0.6 0.6]);

%----first cube------ vert = [1 1 1; 1 2 1; 2 2 1; 2 1 1 ; ... 1 1 2;1 2 2; 2 2 2;2 1 2]; fac = [1 2 3 4; ... 2 6 7 3; ... 4 3 7 8; ... 1 5 8 4; ... 1 2 6 5; ... 5 6 7 8]; patch('Faces',fac,'Vertices',vert,'FaceColor','r'); % patch function material shiny; alpha('color'); alphamap('rampdown'); view(30,30);

%------second cube----- hold on; vert2 = [1 1 1; 1 2 1; 2 2 1; 2 1 1 ; ... 1 1 2;1 2 2; 2 2 2;2 1 2]-0.5; fac2 = [1 2 3 4; ... 2 6 7 3; ... 4 3 7 8; ... 1 5 8 4; ... 1 2 6 5; ... 5 6 7 8]; patch('Faces',fac2,'Vertices',vert2,'FaceColor','b'); % patch function

...how can I then combine the data into a single struct? I need the data for both cubes to be in the same struct (with fields fv.faces and fv.vertices), so I can then save it to an STL file using stlwrite.

Alternatively (to achieve the same objective) if I have face and vertices data for two overlapping objects, how can I combine it into one set of face and vertices data?

Thanks.

Answer 1

[Aniruddha Katre]

You can create struct arrays to store the same type of data for multiple cubes.

For example, you can store the faces and vertices data for the first cube as:

fv(1).faces = fac;
fv(1).vertices = vert;

Then you can store the same information for the second cube as:

fv(2).faces = fac2;
fv(2).vertices = vert2;

For more information about Struct Arrays, see:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2014a/matlab/ref/struct.html

and

http://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2014a/matlab/matlab_prog/cell-vs-struct-arrays.html

[Chris Williams]

Thanks, but I don't think stlwrite will accept a struct in that form.

This works:

    nv1=length(fv1.vertices);

    fv_combined.vertices=[fv1.vertices;fv2.vertices]

    fv_combined_faces=[fv1.faces; fv2.faces+nv1]

However , the problem now is that the merged file is getting very large. How can I address this please?|