I don't need to but I'd like to be able to calculate the volume of irregular shapes using a simple calculator from hand-drawn 3D shapes.
Do you know of any easy to use free Windozeware that calculates volumes of shapes that are so irregular that they must be drawn out freely by hand?
I know I can break each complex shape into simpler squares, triangles, spheres and cylinders but I've always wanted a handy simple 3D freeware tool (like a calculator is) that just generically calculates the volume of any 3D shape you can freely draw by hand on Windoze using a basic mouse.
Does an easy to use Windoze freeware drawn shape volume calculator exist?
The "standard" way to calculate volume is using integration. Unfortunately, many functions cannot be integrated in closed form using only "normal" functions. Thus, some sort of approximation must be used. Typical methods include those you mention above (break shapes into easy to process pieces, etc.) but accuracy would require that you know exact measures of the simpler shapes and that those shapes exactly fill the volume. The issue with hand drawn as opposed to formula-specified shapes is that you only know the metrics up to your ability to measure and model.
If you have an accurate enough model in the computer there might be some software that will do the job. Some CAD programs might do what you want. I don't know if any are free and I do that many are rather expensive. Another possibility is buy/use a 3-D printer to make a solid model then weight the thing; depending on the accuracy of the printer and the density of material being consistent this might be a funny way to go about the problem.
PS I'm rambling above. I have little expertise in the technologies I mention so if any thing said above interests you, do your due diligence.
Put the search phrase "free integral calculus software" into your favorite search engine and see if any of the hits provide something useful commensurate with your knowledge (or memory) of calculus. To this day, I don't know how I ever passed differential calculus much less integral calculus. Never had a shred of understanding of what I was doing. That's when I realized I needed to change my major from physics to biology.
Have a look at Geometer, not sure if this will do what you want, but it does calculate the values of a triangle, a right-angled triangle, circle, pie slice, segments of circles, squares, cylinders, cones, truncated cones, sphere and rectangular. After the missing value is calculated the perimeter and area, volume and surface are also displayed.
Draw it with 3D CAD software instead of freehand. That's really the only way I can see it working. There's some good free 3D software out there for the people doing 3D printing.
I don't know of any OCR type program that can transfer 2D into 3D, though there might be one. But, if you use 3D software and don't want to use the volume calculate function, just print your object, lower it into a full container of water, and measure how much spills.
The old method was to submerge the object or model in water and measure the displaced water (the model can be hollow, just water tight (or you could use sand). I think it goes back to the ancient Greeks :-)
It does -- to Archimedes, who came within a whisker of inventing the integral calculus. I like to think that if he had had the benefit of modern algebraic notation he'd have done it, 2000 years before Newton and Leibniz.
The man was probably the geatest genius of the ancient world, in both pure and applied mathematics.
The Microsoft Store has "3D Builder" application, which is like their Paint 3D, only it supports Subtract, so you can place a cylinder on a cube and subtract a cylindrical volume from the cube. Paint 3D only does Add in drawings, which is rather limiting.
OK, so that one is free, and you get it from the Microsoft Store. It should not ask for a credit card. I was in Windows 11, using an MSA, so I was not challenged in any way to get it. YMMV.
I could save out as a .STL file. As well as saving my scene as a native file (.3MF ???) .
Select Import. Import your .stl file. Then Analyze:Stability
and a volume number will be provided. My cube is about 40x40x40 = 64000 mm3. One cylinder subtracts from the volume. One adds to it. The calc. value is 67042 mm3. The process "roughly passes a smell test".
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The Microsoft 3D Builder emits a binary .stl . The MeshMixer can Import that. The MeshMixer has an Export option and can be asked to emit an ASCII .stl, which can be opened in Notepad.
The Microsoft 3D Builder also saves as .3mf . That is a ZIP file, which contains a .model file inside. The .model file is ASCII. Using
7ZIP I could extract that, then open the .model in Notepad.
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So Microsoft claims that storing in .stl "could lose information". They claim the .3MF is better. But it does not appear so. When you "subtract" a geometric shape from another shape, the two objects are squashed together as a mesh collection. And cannot be edited in future. In the ASCII in that pastebin, even though there is an additive cylinder, a subtractive cylinder, and a cube, only the first and third items appear as objects in the .model file. The cube being "a cube with a hole in it" and an additive cylinder as the second object.
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