Orientation & Improve STL export (orientation, obj format)

[Helmi74]

Hey all,

hope you're having a great new year and wish you all health and success.

After that i came across something that should truely be improved in Fusion360 it is the stl export.

For one it would be great to have it export optionally in .obj format which is read and understood by more and more 3d print processing tools (aka slicers). obj format differs a bit from stl but has some advantages. It has a clear connection between mesh nodes so the stl interpreter doesn't have to guess the topology of the mesh. Autodesk product Meshmixer already exports obj by default so i guess this should be at least an option with the Fusion360 STL export, too.

On the other hand orientation is a real issue. We already talked about the "Y-axis up" default orientation in fusion which is kinda difficult if you work in a complete "Z-axis up" environment normally. This could be changed in fusion by rotation and resetting views and home position but it seems like fusion doesn't really change the way it handles things. First of all the thumbnail preview in the dashboard doesn't reflect this change in thumbnails and previews - it still orients with "Y-axis up" and also it exports to STL in the default orientation.

It would be great to have a simple orientation switch in fusion which would affect all the way orientation gets handled in preview and export too. Maybe a default setting (for me "Z-axis up" would be the selection in 99,9% of my projects).

[deyop]

Happy New Year to you as well.

1.  Currently you can convert a body with the BRep to Mesh. You will find it under the Modify-Mesh commands or in the context menu when you right mouse button click the body.  The results can be defined in the same way you would save an STL.  The mesh can subsequently be be selected and the Save as OBJ can be applied to export in OBJ.  I understand you may want to create the OBJ without actually creating the mesh in the workspace in the same way you create STL files.  Can you give us a bit more detail about what workflow you are trying to support here?  We are working on greater mesh capabilities so it would be good to understand what you are trying to accomplish.

2.  Are you aware of the option in Preferences for "Default modeling orientation"?  This will be applied to all new documents and subsequently exports.  If the majority of your workflow would use Z-up then this would be the place to change the default.   The thumbnails now reflect the orientation (yup or zup) of the documents.  It does this by referencing the setting of the document which was established when the original document was created.  Are you not finding this to be the case?  My testing has confirmed it.

There is not an option to switch the current document setting.  Is this what you are requesting?