Getting the volume of an STL is a good idea! Especially if you were planning on 3D printing anyway.

There are also some other STL viewers/checkers that could be used for that, one is MiniMagics:
http://software.materialise.com/minimagics

- Michael

Hi all & good morning ;-)

& thanks again for your suggestions & comments...

@Steve: This is very interesting indeed - both the calculator and the investment casting opportunity. Just a bit far away it is (I live in Denmark) & the Australian dollar has gone up a lot lately relative to the Euro, and I'll have to pay about 27% taxes on the finished product + shipment price so ... Yet I'll try it out and see what the prices are ..

@Michael: Thanks again! I've actually just completed the first trial version of the design I've shown here previously so would be interesting to see what it looks like in a viewer.

@DannyT: Thank you also for your follow-up & link.

I'm thinking that I might end up having a full toolbox surrounding MoI3D even in the trial period - thank you so much!

In time I may also be interested in doing architectural design & wonder if you have tried to use MoI for this? I watched a tutorial the other day on how Doric Pillars could be modelled and the kind of architecture I'm interested in is something that may resemble Gaudi's:

http://www.google.dk/imgres?hl=da&safe=active&biw=1600&bih=1099&tbs=isz:lt,islt:2mp&tbm=isch&tbnid=NW1bjveXD3KXBM:&imgrefurl=http://kejohnstone.wordpress.com/page/2/&docid=OrjpZJWsXXwaDM&imgurl=http://kejohnstone.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/img_0805.jpg&w=4320&h=2850&ei=5kUSUMTTJsWKhQfN7ICgBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=876&vpy=379&dur=428&hovh=163&hovw=228&tx=160&ty=78&sig=114046012301637364865&page=1&tbnh=155&tbnw=207&start=0&ndsp=37&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:0,i:107

I reckon MoI3D can be used for the modelling part but for rendering the final output so that it is photorealistic are there any facilities in MoI that allows for this? Or should I export it to another program (e.g. Blender or Modo or?)

Greetings,

Jesper

Hi Jesper - MoI does not itself have any rendering mechanisms built into it, it's focused just on modeling.

In order to render you do need to export to a different rendering program. Blender can work but it's fairly painful to use with CAD data because it's not able to import vertex normals for controlling the shading as pretty much all other renderers will do.

There are quite a few people that use MoI in combination with Modo for rendering, and also Cinema4D, Simlab Composer, KeyShot, or Carrara are some other pretty frequently used renderers as well.

- Michael

Hey Michael,

Thanks again for replying & suggesting.

'Best for your day ;-)

Jesper

Hi again,

... just would like to say that as I use this program more I am increasingly impressed with its "simplicity" combined with its ability to do what I'd like to do ...

Thanks ;-)

Jesper

Thanks Jesper, I'm glad that you're liking it!

- Michael

You are welcome Michael ;-) ... Probably some challenges will show up along the way but I really like using it - very straightforward and intuitive to me ...

Greetings,

Jesper