topic Re: .STL file lost after exporting to .STP in Inventor Forum

.STL file lost after exporting to .STP

Daan_M — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 09:47:51 GMT

Hi,

I'm exporting .stl file to .stp but it results in a 10kb file.

No suprise when i open/import the .stp file again, it is empty.

I'm doing the export from .stl to .stp manually by file -> Export -> Different Cad Format -> STP.

.stl and .ipt File attached for testing

EDIT:

I did some extra testing and concluded the following.

- When I create the .stl file with adjusted options, set to ASCII insteaf of binary, and then export as .stp the file is still there. The only problem is that filesize is enourmous.

- Adjusting the resultion quality has no effect

Any ideas what i'm doing wrong? Or maybe this is not possible at all?

Re: .STL file lost after exporting to .STP

JDMather — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 11:53:50 GMT

@Daan_M

Why are you attempting to save stl mesh to STEP rather than simply save the *.ipt solid geometry to STEP?

Re: .STL file lost after exporting to .STP

Daan_M — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 12:50:46 GMT

The reason for this is that the .stl files are smaller in size and get loaded/exported in faster compared to the .ipt files.

i have about 1000 files, the detail isn't very important so a smaller filesize with less detail is fine.

The .ipt size is usually about 50Mb

When using simplify i can get it down to about 25Mb it still takes too long to export to .stp (-+15 seconds)

the .stl size is about 10Mb

if this is not possible at all thats fine, then i will look for another way

Re: .STL file lost after exporting to .STP

TheCADWhisperer — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 13:15:02 GMT

Why do you need stp rather than simply use the stl?

And in the file that you Attached - there is a lot of internal detail that can be removed to reduce file size...

Re: .STL file lost after exporting to .STP

johnsonshiue — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 21:50:08 GMT

Hi! Depending on the geometry, you may be able to downsize the STEP file by changing the export spline tolerance. When exporting to STEP, click on Options button -> set "Spline fit tolerance" to 0.01mm. Is the STEP file smaller now?

Another option is to use JT. It is also a very compact format, which is usually much smaller than STEP.

Many thanks!