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Originally Posted by MikeM
I'm a long time, but occasional user, of AC3D - mostly for rapid sketches of industrial kit and machinery - so no 'pretties'. I now want to try and make some pieces for a laboratory experimental rig using 3d printing, and rather than struggle to learn Solidworks, would love to do it in AC3D. However there seem to me to be a couple of issues I don't understand.
1 How do I make the dimensions 'real world' instead of grid units? If I want a 100mm disk - I can make it 100 units diameter, but how does the conversion to .stl know what this means?
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STL coordinates must be positive numbers, there is no scale information, and the units are arbitrary.
Say wikipedia When I import an STL file to Shapeways, it asks my for the units the grid is defined in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeM
2 What happens to surfaces that are hidden when you merge two pieces. Even if you weld the vertices there are internal surfaces, often hundreds if trying to make smooth curves to accurate dimensions
Thanks in advance for any comments
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I would suggest figuring out a work-flow where that is avoided, if possible.
You know about "snap together by distance...", right? Currently we don't have a tool to find intersecting surfaces (that I know about, anyway) but we do have a tool to find surfaces that aren't properly connected to each other (leaky surfaces).
Ron