Free StL files

From: Marshall Burns (Ennex Corporation)
Date: Monday, September 4, 1995

From: Marshall Burns (Ennex  Corporation)
To: RP-ML
Cc: Dick Newton (Ford  Motor Company), Benoit Michel
Date: Monday, September 4, 1995
Subject: Free StL files
     Thanks to Dick Newton for posting the information about the Web site for Viewpoint Datalabs (http://www.viewpoint.com). I have found two files worth downloading there.
     5freedxf.zip contains what it says: five free dxf files, including a general (military man), a futuristic truck, a 1940s-style office tower, and a dinosaur. These files can be used and converted to StL by the next program: StL_Util is a Windows program that allows reading, viewing, manipulating, and saving of 3-D geometry files in three different formats, with automatic translation from one format to any other. The formats are StL, AutoCAD DXF, and Wavefront obj. I haven't tried the translation yet, but I have used the program to load both Wavefront and DXF files, and it seems to work pretty well. The program also comes with four Wavefront files.
     To get 5freedxf.zip: From the Viewpoint homepage, click on "Free Viewpoint Objects." This will take you to a page where you can view 2-D pictures of each of the objects in the file. On this same page you can click to download (by FTP) the file in any of several formats. I took the DXF format because it was a zip file, which I could unzip in DOS. Some of the formats are provided as tar files, appropriate for Unix, and others are for Macintosh. The DOS DXF version is almost 3 MB and unzips to almost 16 MB.
     To get StL_Util: From the Viewpoint homepage, click on "The Avalon Site: Free 3D Models," then "Utils," then "Converters." Then scan the list (alpha order--case sensitive!) to get to StL_Util.zip near the end. Click to download. It's about 1/2 a meg, and expands to just over 1 meg.
     Another interesting site that I found by a link from the Viewpoint page offers six different files of the Space Shuttle: http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~tolis/shuttle.html. I haven't yet tried any of them, perhaps someone else who looks at them might let us know if they're any good.
     By the way, StL_Util is by Benoit Michel, a Belgian author of several books (in French) on Windows and PC programming. Do any of our European RP folks know him?


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