Without ondsel, this probably would not have happened. The topological naming was a huge problem for some!
Free CAD can convert STL to step pretty easily, that’s why I have had it for a while now.
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How well has it worked for you in your experience? Where is the end location for you with the STEP file usually? I wonder if this would work for my use case.
I, like Philipp, have used FreeCad to convert STL to STEP… usually for importing into Onshape.
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Worked well, I followed this one: https://grabcad.com/tutorials/how-to-convert-stl-to-step-using-freecad
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Wow, I think I should give freeCAD another try! I think it might be more than enough for me needs…
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It really looks great nowadays, three years ago it was ages from what it is now.
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Yes those genius minds behind the scenes have really made it great.
And all the wonderful ppl that do the tutorials.
Ever since the Ian Davis auto cad thing I am anti fusion 360 now lol.
They always change what you get
** I was wrong it was auto desk not fusion360
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What is the difference ( in use) between step and STL imported into Onshape?
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My experience and understanding is that STL is a mesh model and not really editable in Onshape… though I have used it to pick up reference points of some feature I might want to use elsewhere. STEP is an actual solid model and fully editable in Onshape.
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Yes, same goes for Fusion. You can directly edit the model, push, pull, extrude, use the faces. Can’t do that with an imported STL (or only with workarounds which are a pita).
Fusion has mesh editing tools.
The auto conversion from mesh to solid if you have a paid subscription is pretty good, but at a minimum it can do what you can do in FreeCAD (as far as I’m aware…haven’t used FreeCAD much).
From that tutorial, here is my FreeCAD cleaned up LR3 brace
versus the one I have from using the Fusion tool when I still had the free trial
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I thought that was supposed to be the case but onshape’s STEP export doesn’t seem to be much different.
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I’m not sure what you mean. You can import an STL into freeCAD, export the STEP. Then import that into onshape and do things like a Boolean cut or extrude to change the object. Instead of just “tracing” the STL.
I usually do the tracing. I kind of enjoy it because I have to figure out what order things were done and I often learn something. But I will try freecad 1.0 soon, for sure.
Honestly, my favorite feature of onshape was something I didn’t think I would care about. That is the online storage of my entire cad history.
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If I’m understanding what you’re saying…
BOTH Onshape and FreeeCAD will import STL and export STEP okay.
But FreeCAD also has the conversion tool within it to “create shape from mesh” which can then be exported as STEP. To my knowledge Onshape doesn’t have a mesh to solid conversion tool within it… so you’re left doing Jeff’s “tracing therapy” to create a solid that you can play with.
It’s been a couple of years at least since I’ve done any of this so maybe things have changed. If so, I’m unaware. I’ve always followed the procedure in the GrabCAD link Philipp posted a few posts back.
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That’s correct.
You can import an STL, but you will have to create planes against reference points and sketches on those planes to do any modifications to it. You can Export the mesh to STEP from Onshape, but it will still have the original number of faces from the mesh.
It does not have any tools to clean up the mesh without you re-tracing the features by hand.
FreeCAD and Fusion have Mesh tools that can help create a cleaned up Solid Body that will look more similar to what the original CAD looked like, and then Onshape would be able to handle it better.
However, in FreeCAD and Fusion, you’ll still have to do some re-tracing to get rid of the extra faces for complex curves like on the core.
Unless you have paid Fusion, which has an extra “Parametric” conversion option that does a much better job at automatically resolving some of those things as long as it’s a proper mesh
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I have the full version so I thought I would give it a try. All I did was import and convert to solid.
Edit: Done with parametric and faceted conversion.
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Maybe Parametric isn’t the right one? I’m not sure.
I only played with it for a few days.
It doesn’t 100% work on every model, but it does really well on some of them.
Edit: Sorry, yeah, it’s this “Prismatic” option
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I tried the prismatic too but that failed almost immediately. There’s an organic option but thats one I don’t have. I dunno. Just thought I would try.
The core is a difficult one, I think I had problems with that one in particular.
Try it on the smaller models first.
Some of the exported meshes I think are not perfect though