I use solidworks and inventor for 3d modeling at work so I have been using it when I need to draw something up. However many times I just want to make changes to stl files I get online. I haven’t foudn a way to do this in solidworks. I took a look at blender and quickly got overwhelmed. Are there other options that might be better to look at that might be better suited?
I use FreeCAD for that…
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I will sometimes import it into onshape, but it always a mesh. So I end up tracing it to recreate it.
The approach @keeze shows has worked for me, however it has limitations. It is possible to add things to the resulting solid and do boolean operations with it, etc.
However the imported solid itself is a monolithic “thing” that cannot be (to my knowledge) changed. For example, diameter of the round ports, etc. are not editable.
I think those sorts of changes would need to be made prior to importing into FreeCAD using a mesh editing tool. Blender possibly, or maybe meshmixer.
Yes, I see a STL as the bitmap equivalent of a 3D object. Just like the difference between editing a vector and a JPG image… usefull only for simple and basic edits.
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It would be nice if everyone shared more that just the stl on thingverse. Most of the time its easier to just redo it.