Electronics > PCB/EDA/CAD

.STL to SETP conversion

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DenCraw:
Hi.
I have made 6 plates with some holes in Tinkercad.
It produce 3 types of files one is .STL.
I need to convert that design into SETP for a CNC machine. |O
since my knowldege on other CADs is Zero, can anyone may orient me in how to do it?.
Perhaps i can share the files or the tinkercad link privately.

Thanks for any help.

TERRA Operative:
I assume you mean STEP?

.stl is a polygonal format, it is akin to the 3D version of a pdf file. Convenient, but a pain to edit.

STEP is a format that is based on solid modelling, not polygons. A step file may allow for polygons but unless your software is a solid type modeller or can export as such, you might be out of luck.

When I have an STL file and I have no access to the original files or STEP, sometimes I have to resort to re-modelling the part in an appropriate piece of software (I use Rhinoceros 3D).
It's a pain, but it's like trying to convert from a pdf file back to the original word document.....

HighVoltage:
For such a task, I import the .STL into solidworks and then save it as .STEP

Other CAD programs might work the same way.

 

abeyer:
I think the supported way of doing this from tinkercad is the "Send to Fusion360" route... but of course that means you need F360 (and probably would have just started there.)

I think the free version of onshape is another tool that will also do the import/export thing, but typically you will lose accuracy doing that.

SiliconWizard:
With FreeCAD you can do the opposite (import a STEP file and export to STL for 3D printing), but STL to STEP has never worked for me. I just tried again and it fails to export with some 'NULL shapes' errors.
I don't know if it's even supported or not.

As TERRA Operative said, the formats are pretty different, and transforming STL to STEP, when some software actually allows it, will often result in a very sub-optimal STEP file that will be hard to use for CNC machining. But maybe SolidWorks does very clever stuff here, I don't have a license at the moment to test it out.

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