Hi everyone, I’m a new user to this forum and I have been using the trial versions of Rhino for mac over the last few months and slowly getting better at it. I’ve been exporting my drawings as .stl files to use with my up Mini 3D printer without any problems and most of the files have been around the 2 - 4 Mb range.
I’ve just downloaded the latest version (5.0) and started using it. I’ve noticed no difference between all the previous versions I’ve used so far, except that when I went to export it, it said the file size as a .stl was 186.9 Mb! The original drawing was 66.8 Mb (already massive compared to my previous drawings) and not much more complicated than any of the previous drawings I have done.
What gives? My printer can’t handle files this big and locks up. Is there some kind of settings for resolution that I haven’t seen before? This is rather annoying after just spending a considerable amount of time drawing the original up. Can anyone help please?
Hey thanks wim, I just had a bit of a play with that and it made a huge difference to the file size, not sure what impact that will have on the quality or what the setting mean that I adjusted, but I got it down to 44 Mb so that’s heaps better.
As long as you are on your own printer I guess you will get instant feedback on what it has to say for the quality. I do, however, strongly recommend you to read up on all the settings in the help file.
Also, playing around with these settings in the render mesh settings and putting your display to flat shaded will help you see what the values do.
The odd part about your description is the original file being larger than your other previous files. Can you post one of each (an old and new Rhino file) so we can compare them?
As wim is saying, the level of mesh applied matters a lot to .STL file sizes.
Rather than simply exporting an .STL, if you’re not aware of the NurbsToMesh command, this is good to run manually so you can make adjustments as desired. The number of polygons will be identified, too. Then simply “export selected” as an .STL.
(For McNeel: is it possible to either autimatically delete the NURBS file (dangerous, I know) or give the user an option to do so when running NurbsToMesh? Countless times I’ve seen people confused by the resulting NURBS and polygon geometries on top of each other. Not sure what’s a better solution, but this trips up a lot of people, causing accidental and unnoticed file bloat, among other issues with workflow). ~Dave
thank you very much for your reply. I’ll take some time to have a look at what you’ve mentioned here.
By the way, how would I go about posting drawings on here? Is it similar to other forums where I would use an image hosting site like photobucket and then link the topic to the drawings?
