I agree about not extending the STL format. Redundancy of vertices alone makes
the files huge, difficult to debug and fix and creates problems like two vertices
being close but not the same due to round off errors.
Use of floats may (??) be a limiting factor also. Most CAD software uses doubles (8 bytes)
and when writing floats for STL there has to be rounding off.
I dont quite agree with using graphics based formats since there objective is
very different than RP community. Resolution doesnt always mean the same thing in these
two. VRML material properties have very little to do with RP material characterstics
that may be desired.
So what am I suggesting... Perhaps a new standard and I know people roll their eyes
but some thing NIST (nat Inst of standards & tech) can spearhead with reps from all
the RP vendors and RP communities including academia. Yes standards are painful
and take some time to implement but they are not always bad. Look at programming
languages like C and C++. Even IGES - as many as critics there are of the file format
one is still thankful for it - for without it imagine data translation headaches.
It has to meet certain criteria and be open (yet not included the world to drag it down
and no body uses it). Things like build orientations, layer thicknesses (variable),
material properties they should be included.
AR
Dr. Anshuman Razdan
Technical Director PRISM
***************************************************************
* Ph: (602) 965 5368 FAX: (602) 965 2910
* Office: GWC 574 Email: razdan@asu.edu
* Snail Mail: PRISM, MCode 5106 Az St. Univ, Tempe AZ 852815106
* http://surdas.eas.asu.edu/~razdan
***************************************************************
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:53:44 EEST