Hi,
I'm pretty sure that any application can create a perfectly acceptable STL
file, barring egregious bugs. An STL is just a mesh--and a rather crude one
at that, I notice that an STL is much bigger than the same thing in .3ds,
which stores additional 'smoothing' and texture mapping info--and how to fit
a mesh to mathematically generated geometry was figured out eons ago. It's
just a matter of finding what settings produce the desired result, which can
vary depending on the range of options given and the topography of your
model. Maybe one app might by default have more efficient settings, or offer
easier control, but that's it. And I'm sure a lot of them use the exact same
tesselation routines, part of the OpenGL api. No, that doesn't mean the
meshing is 'hardware accelerated,' though I suppose it does mean it's
possible.
Jim
----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Carruthers
Hydraulic Design
--3D Modeling and Design
--Rhinoceros 3D Reseller
http://www.hydraulicdesign.net
mailto:jim@hydraulicdesign.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-rp-ml@bart.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@bart.lpt.fi]On Behalf Of
Kevin Lafferty
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 6:26 PM
To: rp-ml@bart.lpt.fi
Subject: best solid modeler
Dear List,
I realize that not all STLs are created equal. That being the case is there
anyone with knowledge of which solid modeling program, or a ranking of
available programs is/are the best regarding detail fidelity within STL
files. I realize that there are programs for manipulating STLs outside of
the modeling programs and would be interested in a ranking of those as well,
but my primary interest is the ability of the solid modeling programs to
output highly detailed (read facet control) STLs. Thanks in advance.
Kevin Lafferty
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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