Hi Sculpy well both .obj and .stl are polygon file formats, where the model data is made up of a large number of little facets. That's a different type of data than the NURBS surfaces and solids that are stored in CAD file formats.
But CAD file formats aren't themselves hugely expensive you can export to both polygon file formats or CAD file formats out from MoI.
The type of data required can be different depending on the particular thing you're doing and there are even many variations within a certain field, like there's not only one way to do CNC milling, there are some programs that can do it from polygon data and other programs do it from CAD data. Then laser cutting is a different thing as well, that's often done from 2D curves.
You're talking about doing a lot of different possible things and different things will probably involve using different types of data and various other software. Each of these combinations with different software may involve using various file formats for translating your data over.
STL for example is not usually used as the main file format that your original model is saved in, it's typically generated only as needed to send the model data to a 3D printer in the form that it's expecting (in this case made up of a bunch of triangles).
When you're in the process of working with building your design with MoI you will want to save it in 3DM format, and only export to other formats when it's time to bring your data over to some other program.
I'm not sure if that answers your question or not though, maybe you will need to explain a bit more why you're focused on .stl and .obj formats in particular...
- Michael
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