Talk:STL (file format)

message: What does Angle Control do? That's one of the values I can set when exporting STL with Pro/ENGINEER. --84.115.129.76 09:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not a part of the file format itself - it probably controls some kind of automatic mesh simplification in that software.  SteveBaker 19:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Export Controls in Pro/E 

message: Urgh!  Where in this article do we get to say "STL is one of the crappiest file formats on the planet"?! SteveBaker 19:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nowhere, since that's WP:NPOV. There has been discussion about replacing the format with something else, but from the geometry I've seen, STEP or IGES files are no easier... And a format that's not up to that level of complexity probably won't be an improvement. --GargoyleMT 04:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah - I know it's POV - and probably OR also.  It was a rhetorical question.  To be honest, I don't see the need for a 'special' file format for stereolithography in the first place - just use Collada or something. SteveBaker 15:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Besides historical reasons?  I can't find the launch date for the SLA/190, but I think it was mid-to-late 1980s.  The STL format has been around at least as long as that stereolithography machine.  --GargoyleMT 22:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Format Quality 

message: Technically both SolidView and Magics have color representation in (binary) STL files.  Both of different incompatible formats, even. --GargoyleMT 04:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you know the details?  It would certainly be worth adding that to the article.  (Also, I'm in the process of writing some STL handling software and I'd like to be able to read and write colour information). SteveBaker 15:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not know the details off the top of my head.  There have been a few posts about it on the RP-ML list.  I know from experience that Magics and SolidView use different color formats; there may be more than just those two.  --GargoyleMT 23:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm - OK, I'll see what I can find out (I'm actually already subscribed to that mailing list - so I'll just ask again there).  The binary STL format has a two-byte field at the end of every triangle record that claims to be the length of the auxiliary data for that triangle.  Every binary STL I've found "in the wild" has had zeroes in those two bytes - but presumably one could put something other than zero there and have the reasonable expectation that loaders will skip that number of byte before attempting to read another triangle.  That would allow colour information to be included for each triangle.  But what format that's in is anyone's guess.  SteveBaker 06:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Color STL files 

message: Shouldn't this article disambiguate with Standard Template Library.  I could be wrong but I would expect more people who search for 'STL' on Wikipedia to be expecting to find the standard C++ library.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.22.159 (talk) 17:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This vs STL (Standard Template Library)? 

message: I couldn't find anything supporting the statement that the name string is optional. So I am removing that statement as I believe it is incorrect.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Giles Bathgate (talk • contribs) 23:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Name Optional?

message: I only own one book that talks at length about STL.  It's pretty much enough to reference the entire article - but articles created from a single reference aren't the greatest thing in the world.
Does anyone have anything else we can use to reference this stuff from?
SteveBaker (talk) 15:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  References? 

message: can anyone help me understand the need for the normal, this (stl) being such a basic 3d format, i was surprised it still has this redundant data.
so, is it;
1. that in bygone-ages the computational cost was much higher than the storage/transmission cost. (obviously a situation that has been reversed for many a year.)
2. that the right-hand-rule is more recent than the format? 
3. something to do with very low precision allowing facets to be significantly non-planar and so having a slightly ambiguous normal.
(i ask this because i came here to find out and its not in the article)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.162.92 (talk) 21:52, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  normals whats the point? 

message: I fear they have no units (mm, inch). If they have no units, why? And shouldn't this info be part of the article? Are there "common" STL units? 87.159.158.45 (talk) 10:36, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If the industry has not come to agreement on the units, isn't it better to leave them unspecified? —Tamfang (talk) 04:31, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What units have the STL vertex coordinates? 

message: Is there a reason the slicer programs used for 3D printing are not included in the list of software that uses STL files?  I notice the list does not include many of the more commonly used slicing programs, such as Cura, Simplify3D, slic3r, etc.  If this omission is by design, I can understand that.  So, my question is: Is there a consensus that these slicing programs should not be included?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mgg4 (talk • contribs) 01:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Include 3D printing slicers in Software section? 

message: Hi, a while ago I edited this piece of the article to fill in the "examples needed" tag on the sentence about how some programs can do curved surfaces. I thought my edit was fine, but on second thought I haven't done this before, until then all my edits have been fixing links and grammar. Does it look fine to you guys? 
"It is not possible to use triangles to perfectly represent curved surfaces. To compensate, users often save enormous STL files to reduce the inaccuracy. However, native formats associated with many 3D design software use mathematical surfaces to preserve detail losslessly in small files. For example, Rhino 3D[10] and Blender[11] implement NURBS to create true curved surfaces and store them in their respective native file formats, but must generate a triange mesh when exporting a model to the STL format." The citations were added to the article, and pull from the manuals for these programs. // NomadicVoxel (talk) 21:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: @NomadicVoxel: I don't think naming Robert McNeel & Associates as the authors is correct in the Rhino 3D citation – the site states that they hold the copyright, but not that they actually wrote the text being referenced –, so I've removed that. Apart from that, as someone who hasn't been here that long, either, looks pretty good to me. – Rummskartoffel 22:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yikes, didn't think to check the citation maker's work. Thanks. Also, sorry to post twice on this, mobile reply was weird and did it as a top-level comment // NomadicVoxel (talk) 22:28, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: No worries, I saw it either way 🙂. – Rummskartoffel 09:00, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations for representation of curved surfaces.