stl to solid

[Gallchobhair]

Can Bobcad convert an stl to a solid surface.

Thank You
Don


PS Happy New Year

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[BurrMan]

A "solid surface"?

So you mean 1 of 2 things.

1. Convert the stl poliginal surfaces to NURBS surfaces.

No. Bobcad doesnt do this. But its generally a bad idea anyway. 10,000 or 50,000 lottle planar triangles are not going to help produce good results.

2. Thicken an stl "surface" to have manifold volume.

No, not this either. But its not needed either. Dependimg on the part, BobArt will have tools to manipulate things a bit....

Personally, i would manipulate STL data in a poly app. I do have some tools for conversion too. It depends what you are after.

Can't help right now. All my stuff is in storage.

[mcphill]

STL files are point clouds, there is no "easy" way to "convert" them to solids. There are programs that allow you to create surfaces off the parts, but they are quite spendy (DesignX is one). However, BobCAD can machine off STL files, and you can manipulate STL files in programs like MeshMixer. What exactly do you want to do? If you want to bring a solid in to something like SolidWorks, you will have a tough time doing that. But if you want to modify some aspects of the part, or modify it somehow, you can created solids and save them as STL, and merge the original with the other bits in MeshMixer. post up exactly what you want to do and we can probably help you out in some way.

[mcphill]

double post

[BurrMan]

STL files are point clouds, there is no "easy" way to "convert" them to solids.

Well, no, they are not point clouds. They are triangulated, poliginal mesh data. They can also be defined manifold solids. With the popularity of scan software, people are creating non manifold surface scans, then wondering what to do with it.

There are very easy ways to convert them over, it's just a bad idea. The weight of each little planar surface of each triangle is exponential to a polygon definition. And mesh data, depending on the model, can go from 1000's of little surfaces, to millions.

Working in NURBS is much different and is not suited to that particular conversion. Just try make a single planar rectangle surface, in your favorite mcad program, then array it 50,000 copies to see the effects.

Anyway....

[magicniner]

Depending on your part the resulting solid might be too complex to be of much use but you can convert .stl to a solid in FreeCad
A Google search will yield details of how,
Regards,
Nick

[Gallchobhair]

Thank you for the replies. I guess it is not worth the effort
.
Thank You
Don

[BurrMan]

Depending on your part the resulting solid might be too complex to be of much use but you can convert .stl to a solid in FreeCad
A Google search will yield details of how,
Regards,
Nick

And by "solid", you mean a NURBS object. An STL can be a solid.

Thats what i was asking don about. Does he want a NURBS part out of it or is he looking to "thicken" surface data...

Nomenclature!

[mcphill]

Thank you for the replies. I guess it is not worth the effort

What do you want to do!

[magicniner]

What do you want to do!

Crikey!
No one ever starts with a good explanation of what they want to do and why, that's why it's wise to respond "What for" when someone asks to borrow your screwdriver, chances are they'll use it as a pry bar or a chisel ;-)

[Gallchobhair]

I don't use my stl's as a chisel I am not a chiseler . lol jk I just thought that a solid would be less in size. I think what I may have wanted was a surface. I thought that
a surface cube would be less dense then an stl cube of the same size. I am probably all wrong. I was thinking the files would be smaller.

Don

[magicniner]

I suspect that most conversions from stl to a solid will yield a larger more complex file, but if you build the solid in CAD then it's likely to be a smaller file,
Regards,
Nick

[mcphill]

STL files are not usually too large, and if they are, they can be reduced (with a loss in some detail). You can define a square as 2 triangles, so a total of 4 points. But you can also use a billion points to do it. Guess which file will be larger! For simple geometries, you can significantly reduce the mesh density and get a pretty small file (MeshMixer will do this for you, btw). You can zip an STL file and save about 50% as well. But in today's cheap storage, I don't see where there is much need to worry about file sizes... Again, what are you trying to do?

[magicniner]

Again, what are you trying to do?

I read it as to make files for a given model smaller

[Gallchobhair]

Some of my stl's are in the 150 to 300 range. I just thought that smaller file would load faster and would be easier to
manipulate. Just thinking and tinkering. They do not take up much of my storage on my computer. I have 1 TB backup
HD. It is if I want to keep them in a cloud storage. Moving them to cloud at 300MB takes time and space on the
cloud drive.I do have a lot of stl's and am always making more. I am kinda a hoarder I don't delete things LoL

Thank You
Don

[brunocl88]

I recently found myself on the same situation.
Doing some research on internet I was able to find this good tutorial:
http://blog.bantamtools.com/convert-stl-to-step
But the FreeCAD software seams to have some limitation on handling complex shapes. It may work for you.
I found a website to convert the file for me. So far they are a free platform. I recommend to give it a shot.
https://www.cadmeshanalytics.com

Unfortunately I believe there is no shortcut for converting files in parametric model, only to dumb solid.
Good luck!