Cannot read binary STL file with a header that starts with "solid"

[s1291]

According to wikipedia, binary STL files should never begin with "solid" because that may lead some software to assume that this is an ASCII STL file.
However, a lot of binary files start with solid (E.g. Binary stl files from SolidWorks, ..etc). Those files could be read by many software (Paraview, Blender, meshlab, ...etc).

Currently, meshio couldn't read these binary files.

Here is an example of two binary stl files (with and without header):

• cube-header.zip
• cube-without-header.zip

To solve the issue, the _read_binary function should look like:

...
  with open(filename, mode) as fh:
            header = fh.read(80)
            size, = struct.unpack('@i', fh.read(4))
            data = numpy.fromfile(fh, dtype=cls.dtype, count=size)
...

And the function read_buffer must be fixed to detect the type of the stl file (ascii or binary)

PS: numpy-stl could read both types of binary stl files(i,e: with and without header)

[nschloe]

And the function read_buffer must be fixed to detect the type of the stl file (ascii or binary)

Any idea how?

[s1291]

This is discussed here:

• Verifying that an STL file is ASCII or binary.

Or we can follow the approach here

Furthermore, as pointed in this answer:

Additionally you could check for further keywords like "facet" or "vertex" to be sure it's ASCII. These words should only occur in the ASCII format (or in the useless binary header), but there is a little chance that the binary floats coincidentally form these words. So you could also check if the keywords are in the right order.

[nschloe]

Thanks for the links. The issue is fixed now and will be part of the next release.