{"id":2118,"date":"2023-01-09T05:49:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T11:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2022-12-04T18:10:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T00:10:18","slug":"converting-stl-to-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/?p=2118","title":{"rendered":"Converting STL to STEP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Catia is my CAD of choice for most things, mostly because it&#8217;s what I know best. It however doesn&#8217;t have great support for STL files. We&#8217;ll be using FreeCAD to convert them to STEP files which Catia supports well. First we want to open our STL file with FreeCAD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>The entire process is pretty straight forward. We load the file into FreeCAD, create shape from mesh, and finally convert mesh to solid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"840\" src=\"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-3-1024x840.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2113\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-3-1024x840.png 1024w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-3-300x246.png 300w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-3-768x630.png 768w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-3.png 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Load the STL in FreeCAD<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"840\" src=\"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-4-1024x840.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2114\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-4-1024x840.png 1024w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-4-300x246.png 300w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-4-768x630.png 768w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-4.png 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Create Shape from Mesh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I just use the default value of 1 for the popup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"840\" src=\"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-5-1024x840.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2115\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-5-1024x840.png 1024w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-5-300x246.png 300w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-5-768x630.png 768w, https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/image-5.png 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Convert Mesh to Solid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally we export the final shape to a STEP file. Catia can load the new STEP files without issues and let you start modifying them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Catia is my CAD of choice for most things, mostly because it&#8217;s what I know best. It however doesn&#8217;t have great support for STL files. We&#8217;ll be using FreeCAD to convert them to STEP files which Catia supports well. First we want to open our STL file with FreeCAD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[31,70,14],"class_list":["post-2118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","tag-cad","tag-catia","tag-quick-bites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2118"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2182,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions\/2182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rapternet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}