rotating a part for printing

I have some existing CAD drawings where the parts' orientation is not on a suitable plane for printing. The CAD application can output STL files but cannot as far as I can see allow you to re-orient the XYZ axes - I'm stuck with the planes how I originally designed the part when I did not have 3D printing in mind. Slic3r seems only to be able to rotate the model around its Z axis. Is there any way to rotate the model around the X and Y axes to get the appropriate surface on the bed for printing?

I use repetier host on the mac (on the pc it doesn't seem to control the ormerod so well) - BUT repetier host does allow you to rotate in x y and z, and has an autoposition feature too incase the rotation takes you out of the right plane. Import an stl file, rotate it then you can either save the output, or get repetier to launch slic3r to output the gcode (but if you're running on a pc you may not be able to get repetier to actually run the print).

Ray

Quote
rayhicks
I use repetier host on the mac (on the pc it doesn't seem to control the ormerod so well
Ray

Thanks Ray, I've just had a brief play with Repetier, and it appears to do what I need.

Dave

Netfabb Studio Basic is one of the best tools for this. The basic version is free, can fix stls, rotate, scale, move, cut, all sorts of things. Here: [www.netfabb.com]

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

Hi Ian,

Would you use Netfabb to both manipulate and slice or just manipulate?

I use CAD to create my stl and can rotate in CAD but sometime it is not convenient and being able to manipulate an stl in any orientation is useful.

I use it for manipulation of stl files. You can see slices, but only the Pro version of Netfabb does the slicing that creates gcode, not the free version. Ultimaker used to use it for their printers, but I'm not sure if they still do.

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2014 08:46AM by reprappro.

I've tried netfabb basic - looks easy enough, but can't see how to save rotated files in anything other than their own format... Is there something I'm missing?

I've seen where I was going wrong now... In case anyone else has the same problem with netfabb:
Import the part as a sliced file, rotate/resize/edit it, then go to Part>Export Part>As STL.
Looks like useful, free software. Thanks

@squags - You beat me to it... There are quite a few online tutorials for Netfabb. It's a very useful program.

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

you can also import the STL direct and after manipulation export again by right clicking on part indeed.
I find Netfabb pretty good but I am equally impressed by Repetierhost which has more free functionalities than Netfabb