I'm trying to work out a print run in China to help get some ultra affordable parts made. However they want STP or STEP files. They've been unable to use the scad or stl files to get 'volume' information for the pieces.

Can someone help me understand how to convert these?

You will have a job converting from .stl or scad. It seems Open scad produces very bad .stl files which seem incompatible with many CAD systems. Ok for printing only.

Believe me I have tried and it seems most .stl files are incorrectly scaled and have surface errors. This also includes most files on Thingiverse. Your supplier is clearly having problems with the surface gaps (non manifold parts) which is why they cant measure the part volumes.

Perhaps someone on here has some remodelled parts in iges (.igs .iges) format which do go into other cad systems. It is most likely your supplier would accept these also.

A free method to do this is described in the second half of this post.

If you get too many manifold errors, you may not be able to make a good STEP file. If your vendor hasn't been able to get volume information (sounds like a manfold problem) it may simply be that you need to repair the .stl file before sending it to them. There is a free on-line tool for repairing slt files, but I haven't used it yet. I can't remember if it's netfabb or meshlab. Someone else please chime in.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2012 04:06PM by Dale Dunn.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2012 05:36PM by enuro12.