×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

stl files

stl files

stl files

(OP)
does anyone know if there is a way to convert a STL file to a STEP file?

RE: stl files

before you open the stl file, under 'Options' make sure to select open as 'Solid Body'.

If you open it as just a 'graphics body', there won't be any real geometry to export to the step file.

RE: stl files

It depends what you want to do with the resulting STEP file.

If you want to simply get a STEP file that is an exact representation of the STL file's elements, ProE allows you to open the STL then save it as a STEP but the file size can be large and it still features all of the little triangles from the STL. I've never tried this with Solidworks but looking in SW2013 (Professional), STL is available as a file type under Open File.

If you want to convert an STL file from small triangulated surfaces into a solid CAD model with smooth, fully tesselated surfaces then that is a lot more work. Where I have experience of this is is converting STL files from a 3D scanner into solid CAD models. Most scanners output an STL file but don't be fooled by the claims that you can open this straight into CAD and work with it. Some CAD systems can open an STL but they're not much use for modeling with, the best you'll manage is to measure from it to check clearances etc. Typically, the scanner output will have small holes in the STL mesh and the surfaces are not smooth and cannot identify any geometric features such as striaght edges, circles, axis, etc.

To get from the scanners STL output to a solid CAD model that we can use like regular CAD model, we go through the following steps:

1: Process the scanner's STL output in Geomagic Qualify. This fills in any small gaps in the mesh (the number of these depends on the quality of scanner, its operator and the scan resolution). If its a lrage/complicated part that we'vew had to scan in muliple sections or views then we merge them into one file here. You can also smooth out the scanned surfaces to remove any noise in the scanned data. The STL is now ready for loading into a CAD tool but we don't have a solid model yet.

2: There are several ways to process the STL into a solid CAD file but the bad news is that I've yet too find a tool that simply opens up the STL and automatically converts/generates a smooth surface or solid model. There are several packages available but they all require you to select each area/zone of the STL mesh that represent a particular feature (a flat surface, a cylinder etc) and input the relevant info.

-Catia Quick Surface Recognition -This is an additional module, not sure now much it costs.
-Rhino -This is more of a styling system than an CAD system, I think there is a free trial available, we tried it but found it pretty slow.
-Solidworks Professional has a a 3D point cloud import module, I'd expct this to be able to work with an STL (STLs are generated by forming triangles between the points in a cloud, its easy to break an STL back into a point cloud).
-Geomagic Studio: All of the Geomagic tools are pretty slick and this would be my first choice but its still a labor intensive process to convert large complicated parts.

We normally outsource this work, its not cheap but generally the people who specialize in this work are much faster than we are. Its about 2 years since I did a lot of this work so things may have moved on a bit.

Let me know if you have any questions.


Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources