Spirits of Senna wrote:gixxer_drew wrote:I don't know what you guys are smoking, I bring in full car bodies as STL files into SW all day and manipulate them six ways from Sunday. It's just a bit tricky working with facets instead of real SW geometry since an arc won't line up. What are you using this for? You will struggle with printing parts or machining molds or something.
For CFD learning.
The only problem is the 15,000 facets limit and that makes it nasty for a car level of complexity, but there are translation tools out there. Catia is probably probably what you want to be using.
Can you elaborate further as to what I should do in CATIA with the STL to give me a start. I have learnt CATIA in school but just the basics. I just schools would teach meshing with 3D models than just simple model building and FEA simulation.
You need an intermediary format, translate the STL into something that doesnt have the 15k limit like a STEP, IGES, parasolid, etc. Use a translation tool or even another CAD software. If the file has less than 15k facets you just need to turn on the options to import as a solid for STL files in SW. The geometry needs to be good though it will come in as surfaces. If you are doing CFD that will be a problem and you will need to manually fix them up.
