That's a thing I like about trueSpace. It can open STL and work can be done on
it just like its native COB format. Just one problem. It imports STL and some
other formats with the model shrunk so it fist within an 8 unit cube of
whatever the currently selected model unit is. So to get the size right I have
to first open the STL in a slicer to get the XYZ dimensions, then enter those
numbers in the object panel.
Comes out fine every time, just have to work in metric because the only unit
STL understands in the millimeter. Thus in trueSpace I can make small objects
with the settings in Meters, medium size objects with settings in Centimeters,
and large objects with the settings in Millimeters. To STL they're all the
same. Changing the unit in trueSpace just serves to best fit the model to the
work space so I don't have to zoom way in or out.
So if an STL is 10.326mm x 13.962mm x 25.014mm I'll open it in trueSpace and
set it to those numbers in Centimeters. After editing and exporting back to STL
it 3D prints in Millimeters. After the initial import, all work is done on the
COB version so there can't be any 'creep' from repeated re-importing and
scaling up to proper size.
It would be really nice if Microsoft could be persuaded to release the
trueSpace source code so that others could update it and fix issues neither
they nor Caligari got around to, like the incorrect importing size for STL and
some other formats, and the "WTH were they thinking?" problem of it being able
to *write* but not *read* VHTML 2.0. some parts couldn't be released open
source, like the Lightworks renderer. At the time that was added to trueSpace,
the price of trueSpace + all the available extra $ addons was less than the
cost of the Lightworks rendering plugin for other 3D modeling software.
On Monday, June 29, 2020, 6:56:56 PM MDT, Chris Albertson
<[email protected]> wrote:
It is rare for a CAD program to be able to modify .STL files. In
Fusion360 there is a way to transform STL back into editable CAD and I
think Onshape can do the same.
An analogy is that you can edit text with a word processor but if you take
a photo of the document with your cell phone, the text is now an image and
you would not expect to be able to edit it. STL is like a photo. It is
just 3D pixels and has lost all the lines, angles, and circles and points
that the CAD file had.
Yes there is OCR to take images back to editable text and as said some CAD
systems can import STL files back into CAD. STL never translate back
perfectly even in the best case.
So, Don't give FreeCAD a "fail" for this.
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