Hello Forum,

I am attempting an interesting project. My goal is to create a representation of a grayscale photo in which the darker pixles will be at the base level and all of the white pixles will stick out, so as to create the different colors through shadows when sent to a 3d printer.

I have created a .xyz point cloud with x and y being the position in the photo and z being the brightness, or the height of the column to be printed. When I put the cloud into solidworks and use the mesh prep wizard, the majority of the image is gone and there are some slopes created where the image has a more smooth change in color and the points are closer together.

What I want to know is; how is it possible to instead of trying to make a smooth surface out of my points, simply make a column from the back plane up to each individual pixel. So that my part is essentially a grid of pins of different heights for the different z values. Or 3D histogram of brightness values at each (x,y) coordinate for the printer to print.

Attached is a screen shot of the point cloud in Solidworks, as well as the mesh it generates and the original picture.

A huge thank you to anyone who is willing to help out with my problem!