I've been running some more experiments with meshlab decimation filters. They are impressive but going back to the discussion. It is a balancing act on keeping the right amount of geometry for the results you are needing.
Here is an example. Instead of using a ridiculously large object I used a simple model I just built and applied the decimation filter. You can really see the difference in the two models. The bottom model is the original and the top model has had the meshlab decimation filter applied. First the quads were converted to tris which can give weird geometry when exported as STL and some detail was lost. The threads and bottom handle are now a little funky because of the tris.
This was just an example. I would never actually use decimation on this model since it was fairly small to begin with but just to illustrate what you are doing to a model when you reduce geometry with these functions.
Blender does exactly the same thing to a model as part of its decimate modifier. Just have to keep an eye on artifacts that may appear after the filter/modifier. I believe meshlabs does do a better job at this though.
The simplified model would still make an okay pattern even with reduction in geometry though different from the original.
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