Bodies missing from STL and OBJ exports

[matthewthomasoconnell]

For the past couple weeks I've been using the .obj exporter to share with a collaborator who uses Blender.  It's worked great until a couple days ago, when some of the bodies in my design are no longer showing up in the export.

I've tried several things:

• Going back to previous versions
• Making the bodies in question invisible and then visible again
• Restarting the software
• Trying an STL export instead of an OBJ export (same issue)

Does anyone have any ideas?

Here is a screenshot of the model, next to the .obj export.  You can see that several knobs are missing along the top and in the lower left hand.  Also, this is not a blender import issue, because loading the .obj files in other programs has the same result.

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

You will need to share your model so the Forum users can take a look at your model.  If you do not know how to attach your Fusion 360 model follow these easy steps. Open the model in Fusion 360, select the File menu, then Export and save as a F3D or F3Z file to your hard drive. Then use the Attachments section, of a forum post, to attach it.

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

.stl files are actually not a good option for import into Blender.

.obj file include custom split normals, which are important for proper shading in Blender.

The best export option into Blender is actually the .fbx format as it retains the assembly structure.

It might exhibit the same problem as the .obj file though. 

If you can share your design in native .f3d format we can test a few things.

[matthewthomasoconnell · Accepted solution]

Thank you both!  After 2 days of struggling with this, I decided to clean up any timeline errors in the project history, and somehow that solved it. I'm still not sure exactly what was going on, but now it's working as expected.

Next time I will upload the .f3z file with the question. I'll also try the .fbx file for Blender.  Thanks very much for that tip!