I’ve noticed that many people spend a lot of time fixing STL files before printing.
So I wrote a short guide explaining why ready-to-print models can save hours and reduce failures, especially for sellers and beginners.
Would love to hear your experience — do you prefer fixing models or using optimized ones?
Here is the article if you’re interested:
HARD NO. First off STL needs to go away and STEP files need to become the norm for sharing 3D print files.
Second, I don’t trust most people to create a properly printable file with or without supports, don’t add more crap to a hard to edit format that I’ll have to deal with to ensure success. There are just too many people out there that don’t know what they are doing.
This^. Also I like to tweak the models like for me that’s part of the hobby, tweak the machine. Also Ive seen a lot of that instant shit is ai slop
Btw, why is it that STEP isn’t natively supported in many slicers? Are there patents or something on them?
It isn’t? All the slicers I’ve used for the past few years support it.
STEP is an ISO standard so it isn’t like you are paying licensing like you might with Parasolid which is owned by Siemens.
- stls are bad actually
- model needs to be designed for print from the start
- yes, properly designed ‘ready to print’ models can be great, yet there is still a lot of variance in printers’s capabilities that will require at least some time to configure in slicer
Whats wrong with stls?
The only use case I see for helping with STL files at this point, is if the path to quads is made easier. As others have said, STEP is far better because it retains π. I do not do file sharing or print the designs of others because they are usually of dubious quality. Sadly, legislation has made the subject of connecting and sharing political with no effective push back from businesses in this space. If I am forced to chose between digital slavery with internet and disconnecting, I prefer the island life. In prep for that impending dystopia, I would not use any online service like this in my tools. I hope it is useful for someone. GL.
