STL file formats

From: André Dolenc (Helsinki University of Technology)
To: RP-ML
Date: Sunday, September 18, 1994
Subject: STL file formats
Elaine Persall writes:
 > Some of you were awake!!

Huh? What was that??!  ;-)  ;-)  ;-)  ;-)

 > Considering the amount of work being done to assure, correct and manipulate
 > that STL data,
 > maybe some attention should be focused on that format.   Or maybe I'm not
 > hearing the user
 > community very clearly. Are we satisfied with what we have?

No. Recently EARP had a meeting at the University of Leeds in which this
topic was addressed, and a joint
document is being prepared expressing our position with respect to data
exchange formats for RPT. I am not sure how or when it will be made
public, but is should be publically available RSN.

 >  When we don't express any opinions  or concerns we get de facto standards.
 > Are users willing to take
 > less than they want and then have to pay a second or third  time to achieve
 > what should have been
 > in the first place?

Let us not be too harsh on RP vendors; their business is to develop and
sell machines. After all these years of CAD, we do not have a complete
solution for the data exchange problem. Why should we expect *them* to find
it for us?

The best we can do is to cooperate in order to use the best technology
available at the moment.

IMHO, the STL format was a good decision at the time, but perhaps nowadays
it is time to move on to something else, if there are any benefits in doing
so...

Regards,
Andre'