In all my 3D-design ignorance I managed to learn SolveSpace and I very much like its simplicity and parametric philosophy. I designed a few 3D-printed details I needed for my projects.
Then came a challenge: take an existing STL and modify it. SolveSpace can import STL, but comes out the STL I had was an “text STL” (usually .ast
extention) but SolveSpace can only do “binary STL” (usually .stl
extension). I had the wrong STL.
The author also published STEP (.stp
) file. I’ve tried one route - FreeCAD, but the philosophy here is completely different. I didn’t feel like going through 38 episodes tutorial only to modify some antenna holes in a model.
Then I’ve tried one thing: imported the original .stl
(which should have been .ast
) into FreeCAD and then exported it once again as .stl
which, for FreeCAD, is the binary format.
And that worked! SolveSpace managed to import the model and I was able to modify it in the usual way.