STL File Parser

Instructions

To build and run the STL parser using Docker , follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have Go installed.
2. Clone the repository or unzip the provided package.

• N/B In the case you want to use the docker image follow these steps:
• Build the Docker image: docker build -t stlparser .
• Run the Docker container, providing the path to the STL file as an argument: docker run stlparser /path/to/your/stl/file.stl

3. Open a terminal and navigate to the directory containing the code.
4. Run the following command to parse an STL file:

go run main.go /path/to/your/file.stl

Replace /path/to/your/file.stl with the path to the STL file you want to analyze for example im using moon.stl file so im running the go run main.go Moon.stl

Design Decisions

• The code is organized into multiple files for better modularity.
• We use the bufio.Scanner to efficiently read the STL file line by line.
• External package github.com/quartercastle/vector is used for efficient vector operations.
• We parse each triangle's vertices and calculate the surface area using vector operations.
• The main program reads the STL file, parses it, and calculates the surface area.

Testing

• The tests were implemented using goldie files github.com/sebdah/goldie/v2

• You can run the test by navigating to the directory with the test file in this case to the stlparser then run: go test -update stlparser/stlparser or go test

  All the tests are running successfully.

Performance Improvements

• To handle models with millions of triangles, we can consider parallelizing the calculation of the surface area.
• We could also optimize memory usage by not storing all triangles in memory at once but calculating the surface area incrementally.

Feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback.