STL Import for Bricscad is a Stereolithography STL file import plug-in for Bricscad® powered applications. This plug-in gives Bricscad powered applications the ability to import geometric data from ASCII and Binary STL files.
The STL file format is the Rapid Prototyping industry's standard data transmission format and is the format required to interact with stereolithography machines. Stereolithography files contain solids which are made up of 3 sided facets. STL Import for Bricscad converts these facets into a single PolyFace Mesh entity and adds it to the active drawing.
STL Import for Bricscad is very easy to use. Once installed, it must be loaded into the Bricscad environment. Follow the simple instructions in the ReadMe document which can be found in the installation folder. Once loaded it adds new commands to Bricscad's existing commands and a new submenu called "STLImport" to the Bricscad menu containing these newly added commands.
STLImport - Imports an STL file
STLImportHelp - Displays the STL Import for Bricscad help file
STLImportRegister - Registers your copy of STL Import for Bricscad
STLImportAbout - Displays the STL Import for Bricscad About box
The STL File Format
The STL file format is the Rapid Prototyping industry's standard data transmission format and is the format required to interact with stereolithography machines. Stereolithography files contain solids which are made up of 3 sided facets. STL files may be ASCII or binary data, although binary is far more common due to the resulting size of the CAD data when saved to the ASCII format. A STL file describes a raw unstructured triangulated surface by the unit normal and vertices (ordered by the right-hand rule) of the triangles using a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Many CAD systems are able to output the STL file format among their other formats, but very few have the ability to import STL files.