STL Files: Reading the Number of Triangles in VBA

The file format for the STL file is described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_%28file_format%29.

It states that the number of triangles is and unsigned 32 bit integer. Unsigned integers are not a native data type in VB. So what needs to be done is convert a Long signed integer into an unsigned integer. Microsoft has a good description of this at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189323.

The key function that needs to be used is:

      Private Const OFFSET_4 = 4294967296#

      Function LongToUnsigned(Value As Long) As Double
        If Value < 0 Then
          LongToUnsigned = Value + OFFSET_4
        Else
          LongToUnsigned = Value
        End If
      End Function
 

The code to read the number of triangles then is:

 
Sub ReadBlockStl()
    Open "C:\Block.STL" For Binary Access Read As #1
    Dim NumOfTrian As Long
    Get #1, 81, NumOfTrian
    Close #1
    MsgBox LongToUnsigned(NumOfTrian)
End Sub

This code worked find on a cube that had 12 triangles.

However, I tried it on an object that 33924 triangles and I got an overflow error on a for-loop for NumOfTrian. Of course, NumOfTrian is a Long with a maximum positive value of 32768. But when I used a double precission, I still get the same overflow error.