Included in these toolpaths is “support material”: automatically generated sacrificial sections that ensure suspended or cantilevered overhang sections of your part are supported during printing. A slicer takes a part, divides it into “layers” parallel to a user provided reference plane, and generates toolpaths for the print head to follow on each layer while extruding material. These paths are automatically generated by a slicer in all 3D printing software programs. Slicing: from solid body to printable partģD printers rely on toolpaths to execute their tasks. If you don’t use CAD but still want to 3D print a part, there are several large online repositories of printable STL files available for free download.

If you export the entire file at once, the resultant STL often fixes both parts relative to each other, making them impossible to print. ‍ Multibody parts and assemblies: If you’re working with a multibody part or assembly, make sure that you export each part individually. The left side of the sphere is saved at a low resolution, while the right side is saved at a high resolution. Knowing the use of your part can inform what to prioritize.Ī line drawing of two halves of a sphere saved at different STL resolutions. Small meshes make realistic, accurate parts, but yield massive files that may be difficult for your 3D printing software to process. Large meshes yield smaller file sizes that process faster, but create parts that can be faceted and inaccurate. ‍ Mesh quality vs file size: When exporting STLs, CAD programs allow you to determine the density of a triangle mesh. When exporting these files, there are a couple of important factors to take into account: These files store 3D data by breaking your part’s surfaces up into a mesh of triangles, and can be exported from virtually any CAD program. While traditional subtractive machining relies on a combination of part drawings and Computer Aided Machining (CAM) files, 3D printers accept STL files.

The first step in 3D printing is creating a file that 3D printing software can parse. There are four key steps to go from a part model to a 3D printed part: importing the part file from CAD into the software, turning that imported part file into a printable file, sending one or more of these files to your printer, and managing your printer(s) to maximize uptime and throughput. Different 3D printing software programs can vary greatly, but all have the same core elements and parse a unified file type.

3d print small objects files