Hi,

Is there a way of exporting STL directly in inches. The models show up 25.4x smaller. I have everything set to inches.

Thanks,

Pieter

Hi Pieter, STL files do not have any method in the file structure to label what units the file is in. So because of this there will usually be some setting in the importing application where you can tell it what units were used, please look for an option like that in your receiving application it is probably currently set to mm and you will need to set that to inches in order for your file to come through properly.

If you can't find any such setting in your receiving application I guess that means that it only expects to receive STL files in millimeter units, so if that's the case you will need to switch your units in MoI to mm before doing the export. Then you can set it back to inches again after you've done the export. You will want to have the setting in MoI for scaling when changing units to be enabled, that's under Options > General > "Unit options" button > "Scale on unit system change" checkbox should be checked.

- Michael

Michael,

Thanks for the quick reply. I was trying to figure out why all of the files exported in .STL binary from emachineshop application open correctly in inches using Cura and all of the MOI3D STL files open in mm. There must be some assumptions made in Cura based on header or other fields. I can deal with this :)

Regards,

Pieter

Michael,

You're correct. Cura expects the STL files to be created with the scaling set to mm. In the future maybe you can include an option to use scaling mm or inches for STL export if it makes sense.

Thanks,

Pieter

Hi Pieter, yes I can add an option for STL export for scaling it into some specific unit system that you could pick. If you remind me about that again when v4 betas are underway I should be able to add it then.

There is something like an 80 character generic header space in binary STLs which I guess those apps must use to communicate some private units information, but it's not part of the official spec to have the header contents change the import process though.

- Michael