Many programs capable of designing 3D models are also capable of exporting or saving those models as. gcode files for 3D printer host software.Įxporting an STL file for printing is one of the first steps in producing a 3D model on a 3D printer. All of these facets enable slicing software to interpret the models and produce. STL coordinates must be positive numbers, there is no scale information, and the units are arbitrary. An STL file describes a raw unstructured triangulated surface by geometries located within a standard Cartesian coordinate system. STL files describe only the surface geometry of a three-dimensional object without any representation of color, texture or other common CAD model attributes. This file format is supported by many other software packages it is widely used for rapid prototyping and computer-aided manufacturing. STL is also known as Standard Tessellation Language. STL: STL (STereoLithography) is a file format native to the stereolithography CAD software created by 3D Systems. Known as a 'mesh model', the most common file type for 3D printing is called STereoLithography, or STL.
In order to produce a physical part, a 3D printer requires a specific file type. There are three different types of digital files, broadly speaking: ones for printing, ones for modeling, and ones for 2D drawings.