Battle of the File Formats - What is 3MF
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
- There's a new file format in town that superior to the STLs you've been using in every way. But will anyone use this incredible boon to 3D printing, has yet to be determined. Find out more about 3MF and why you should be using it today!
Be sure to like, subscribe, share and enjoy.
3D Printing Professor is made possible by YOU!
www.3dpprofessor.com/support/
I'm social!
/ discord
/ 3dpprofessor
/ 3dprofessor
Buy the Beginner's Guide to the 3D Printing Galaxy on Amazon: amzn.to/2ws7OiT
Shop at GearBest to support the channel: www.gearbest.com/3d-printers-...
Follow my other 3D printing adventures at: www.3dpprofessor.com
Join the mailing list and never miss anything important: bit.ly/3DPPnews
All music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/... - บันเทิง
![[Full Episode] MasterChef Junior Thailand มาสเตอร์เชฟ จูเนียร์ ประเทศไทย Season 3 Episode 4](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/e7Oqqo90x_w/mqdefault.jpg)
Pro-tip, you can speed up videos in the settings.
Does it sound like I'm talking through a tin can and a string? That's because I am. www.3dpprofessor.com/2019/02/08/battle-of-the-file-formats-what-is-3mf/
I listen/watch to tons of TH-cam videos at high speeds. Amusingly, most of the time, just speeding up the video doesn't make people sound like they're talking into a tin can. But, in your case, it seems that you wanted to use a tin can for that awesome retro sound! ;)
I just installed a add-in for Fusion 360. I can now save to .3MF! Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will help spread the word and start making all my files in this format.
I'm a Solidworks guy and thankfully it can save files as 3MF's. Glad I watched this though because ive seen that file type for years but never bothered to investigate what it was for haha. Great vid and I appreciate the history lesson! I always love a good origin story
Awesome stuff! Love your videos, very structured. Thanks for making this!
Great video. Glad you mentioned how 3D builder exports in 3MF (I love how it does it as default). Whenever I repair a file in it, or even design in it I always export as 3MF. Oh, just signed up for your filament of the month club (said I would when you did your original video proposing the idea). Looking forward to my first one, and glad to be able to help support your channel through it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks! I will start trying to implement this file type into my work flow.
Educational, entertaining and well produced. Good work.
Excellent video! Josef Prusa finally caught up with you yesterday Joe :) (Same video topic).
Thanks for this Prof.
Greatly explained!! Thanks!!!!
You earned my like when you referenced the Smoot
Great information!
Glad to hear you are a fellow Pratchett fan
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Great info! thanks
I am old, I use Sketchup to do my 3D work, and sometimes Meshmixer, and you are right: what a pain in the Back end bumper: sometimes size will be off. A new format sounds nice, something solid and that "Dose it all" is right down my alley!
I didn't realize that Solidworks exports 3MF(which it does), and that Simplify3d imports it (which it does). Easy peasy. No more "The part appears very small..." messages when importing into Simplify3d! This is my new favorite format, THANKS!
I love STL for its simplicity. If you want to experiment with algorithmically creating 3D shapes, STL is one of the formats that are very easy to generate. For 3d printing I would like a format supporting curved surfaces and of course multiple materials. I'd prefer a JSON rather than XML and open rather than closed format - perhaps glTF adapted to 3D printing needs?
this is a particularly good video
3MF seams a a good path :-)
Thanks for sharing :-)
Heard loud and clearly, Joe! we'll see what we can do.
Oh, man, now that I know I've got your ear, there's a ton of things I'd love if Tinkercad implemented. Honestly, I can not express my admiration for your program enough. Any chance the OBJ export could name the OBJ and MTL in the zip something other thing tinker.obj every time? And could we get an outliner so we can see the objects we've got named and the hierarchy of them? And temporary hiding object would be awesome.
@@3dpprofessor Thanks, Prof! Some of these things are already on our roadmap and some are discussed, but might be too 'professional' for an app that is designed specifically for beginners. Always tricky with Tinkercad, our evolution doesn't always follow the expected path, but we're always glad for the suggestions and the reinforcement that overall we're heading in the right direction.
Very interesting
I hate .stl’s, especially when trying to modify them in CAD software. Hopefully .3mf becomes a standard across the community
are you sure that .3ml is saving the files as a solid and not as a tetrahedron meh like .stl does?
3mf is still a triangle mesh format. Of COURSE you're having problems modifying them in CAD software because CAD software doesn't deal with meshes well, neither is it even their purpose. You complaining about handling meshes in CAD is similar to complaining how hammers are not suited well for screws. Sure, you get them into the wall eventually, but it's still not the right tool. You want to deal with meshes? Get a bloody mesh modeling tool!
@@Anvilshock , that might explain why a project that I thought would be simple took me 5 months.
Less people have IDEX printers vs single hotend/extruder so this isn't as well known. To do multi color prints you need to choose 3mf format when sending to your slicer since it takes multiple models to do multiple colors. The reason 3MF is needed is the part origins in model space are also saved so you can group and move them as a single part after setting which extruder each model part will be printed with.
Fusion 360 does have the 3mf option now in it's 3dprint utility under File -> 3D Print
Another issue with sharing 3MF files is (at least in Cura) that the slicer/printer/material settings are also saved as a project so you want to import model only if you downloaded the 3MF from someone else.
It is a really great format as long as you understand why opening as a project may not be a good idea for shared files. Also you can unpack a 3MF by changing the extention to .zip which I rarely do but can be handy.
An alternative to 3MF would be AMF, which is supported by all of the tools I use (FreeCAD and Slic3r PE for example), is an ISO standard... and it doesn't involve that company from Redmond.
What features does that come type have?
Yeah, that sounds interesting. I get offered AMF as my default export format in FreeCAD and have considered using it. Can somebody go into depth on this format please. Pretty please!
It has most of the same features as 3MF, and is almost as complex. In fact, I don't see any advantage AMF has over 3MF besides being "open". Which, while I respect, I don't really care about that much. Half the time "open source" means "Eh, it's functional. Good enough. Tou want better than that, you do it," and no one ever does. I wrote more words about this here: www.3dpprofessor.com/2018/12/21/absolutely-loving-the-monoprice-voxel-3d-printer-video/
@@3dpprofessor Open standards don't have any relationship to open-source. They are there to facilitate exchange of information and compatibility. Open-source is important but open standards more so.
Proprietary standards of course can move faster and often adapt to circumstances better. 3MF forms a middle ground being an industry consortium standard, half way between proprietary and open, but depending on which industry players are in control, such efforts can become highly political, they become a playground for wrangling the users away from smaller industry players and towards the larger more influential ones.
@@SianaGearz I like it more already! I'm all in on open standards. As for mentions in the comments about open source apologists, let's not forget that there are apple apologists, Microsoft apologists and probably even dangerous driving apologists. I chose open source and open standards for moral reasons and yes, there's problems in that camp too, but I'm _happier_ here.
It makes a lot of sense but we need the comments from the concursuum to keep it open sourced
I like 3MF because it can carry a print profile with it but because of that I think one really needs to take care to check all the parameters of the profile before printing.
For example if I made a 3MF with a 400 degree nozzle temp and you download it and elect to use the profile embedded in its archive (change the file extension from 3MF to zip can you can view this archive on your PC) and you don’t see that it could spell disaster for your printer.
You could just elect to not use the files profile though if one exist when you open it in your slicing software.
So in other words as far as I see there's really only three main differences between the two files the space requirements are different the file information is different and there's color but the way the model is rendered in 3D is the same in both files. So my question is do I really need to switch? I mean I'm not using a multi extruder printer so I only work with one color at a time and since most of the printing I'm doing is miniatures my scaling is based off pre-existing miniatures so is 3 MF really useful for my needs?
MKV files are a video file format that seems very similar in concept to 3MF. It took quite awhile to become widespread, but it's become one of the dominant media storage formats because of its flexibility and its open implementation. Hopefully 3MF can pick up speed and soon see widespread adoption in a similar fashion.
Really? I think I've seen about ten MKV files in the past decade, and seven of those were prior to 2015...
Perfect
Do you know if 3mf has features for encryption, block chain or drm ?
It has the potential for these, but no one has implemented them yet.
Please no, not another STL derivative! ... We already have (had) a great format for sharing models. It's called STEP and can actually represent circles, design intent and anything that a sane person would want, the AP214 version has colors and many other things that slicers could use. Imagine if slicers could generate perfect G2/G3/G4 movements and good boards like Duet3D could interpolate them on a single-step resolution (instead of Marlin's 0.1mm segments). For more, see ISO 10303. ... Even the guys from e3d joke about how we need STEP/IGES in 3d printing.
Absolutely. This closes the gap which you don't have when doing CAM in Fusion. Cam can work with original geometry, not triangles, and it's a thing of beauty. If we can import step into slicers, they can actually use curve operations, it's kinda ridiculous that 3d printing deriving from CNC has left all the best CNC movement commands out of slicers.
You remind me of the “History guy”. Have a good on video presence
Without the ability to import and export it into established cad programs it may be very slow for it to catch on. For instance, I love the free drawing program called Gmax but it cannot export to a format I can use in other popular programs so I quit learning how to draw with it.
For work I was questioned by some companies for color data to be exported for SLS color printers. The file format for keeping colors over the model was VRML and strangely works. 3MF still is not adopted on main CAD at this day because it has been shown as an alliance between Microsoft, Autodesk and 3dsystems. They worked to show it with Windows 8 and cubify 3dprinter line. Next it was adopted by Makerbot and Stratasys. No open source software is in the way to add it as I read in the internet. Did you find something else?
Hi ilovedoom, at least OpenSCAD and Cura are supporting the format today. And there is a debian package available that makes it available in most Linux environments: packages.debian.org/en/sid/lib3mf1
As I see it, many big commercial programs (3D modellers and others) like to try pushing their own "native" formats, trying to force more people to pay for their products, so that they can open the files in the first place. In addition, many try to keep the inner workings a secret, to prevent people from writing their own converters for their formats.
OBJ and STL are probably seen as relatively "harmless", due to their lack of features. In addition to what you said, they also lack any animation related features, skeleton etc. (which are generally not relevant for 3D printing). Pretty much the same thing with word processors & .txt files.
Not many people will use them, if they have any needs for the missing features. At the same time, the company can claim being "open", by having support for somewhat useless common standards. And interoperability with other programs that also support them, even if you would have to discard essential information to get the project there.
And then there are companies like Microsoft, who warn people about using open / libre office, since its "Microsoft format" support might not be perfect, due to the standards being closed, and people having to reverse-engineer them.
I really wonder whose fault that would be. :-)
And regarding information in models, you're just scratching the surface...
Another thing that many slicers can already do, but the available methods for doing it are far from optimal, is being able to print specific parts of a model with different settings (like adding stronger infill where needed), and being able to print specific parts of a model from different colors, or even materials. And yes, these can need more information than just the "surface color".
well, if you spent 10's and 100's of millions on building up a billion $ business, i think you wouldn't easily give it all away...
@7:56 "maybe in a year..." Well its getting close to a year, and Blender is still lacking this even with 2.8 release
First thing I thought when you spoke of STL limitations was that one couldn't have multiple objects in a file, each to be printed in a different color or material or nozzle size. This 3mf seems lacking already at least for 3d manufacturing, or does it have these features and you just didn't mention them? What is my slicer to do with a 2d texture skin? that may be good enough for virtual but printing? Licenses and other meta informations are good to include in any new format but that's not as important as finding new formats for upcoming multi-material-printing.
It does support multiple object, and even maintains a hierarchy. However, it can be difficult to export things in this way. But yes, I have already made 3MFs with separate bodies that can be ungrouped in the slicer and assigned different materials. It's awesome.
I had already put in a feature request for Blender to support native 3MF, a few months ago
Yup, me too. I'm hoping we can browbeat them into submission.
@@3dpprofessor Blender uses a separate site called Right-Click for feature requests
Them and Tinkercad. I'll let someone else carry the torch for Fusion 360.
@@grogyan Then come join the revolution! blender.community/c/rightclickselect/RCcbbc/
Saw this video this morning....and thought about the used up HDD capacity taken up by over 2000 .stl mostly downloaded...but many variations “ splits” and then copies on a second external HDD...just in case! Unless I did it wrong, Cura cannot save a file as .3mf, but it will accept a 3mf and slice it. I tried an online file converter...which seemed to take an hour! Then recalled seeing 3mf as an export file option in Raise ideamaker. On the desktop was a .stl I have been trying to repair mesh issues as notified by Cura 4.3.0. ie...its not watertight. I dropped it into ideamaker...which notified the mesh issue, I ignored and exported the file as a .3mf .....dropped it in to Cura...no mesh warning! The .stl has a file size of 15 meg....the .3mf is 4.1 meg! Why have we been missing out on this after 2015 ?? Saving disk space and seemingly repairing mesh issues in one!
Lanky Lad “Cura cannot save in .3mf” -> I don’t know if it’s a change from older versions, but I just started with 3D and with Cura 4.6 (now 4.7), and it *saves natively in... .3mf*!! 🤖
Guy Mauve.....??? its 9 months since my comments....4.6 and 4.7 were not even thought of! Not intending to read posts here to recall the topic. Move on!
i make video games for a living, so i do all my design in either maya or 3ds max. neither of which are really set up for printing. and neither one supports 3mf as of this time. at least not the versions i currently have access to. importing and exporting stl files is no big deal in my applications. i have yet to try any other modeling software though...
If I want quick, I go with .stl, but I have found .obj useful.
I am learning OpenScad and it will export 3MF but I want to use a Anycubic printer and I use Linux ( I would rather walk a mile barefoot on broken glass than go back to windows) so that means I will have to use the Lychee slicer and I cannot figure out if Lychee will accept 3MF.
Give it a shot and let me know how it works.
@@3dpprofessor I am actually fighting with it right now . I make a drawing , render it , close it , choose close and save , go to the USB and I am not given a option to save , I try all the options there are none save the file , I try else where and still no save option is given . I can export it as a STL file but I can't import it to work on it because it is invisible to the program . I feel like I just bought a new car and it has no door handles . I use another Cad program Qcad all the time but it has a save button .
FreeCad 0.19 offers .amf, 'additive manufacturing format'. I just exported the test hook model to this format and Cura was able to open with no problem. Does anybody know how this format compares to the .3mf format?
Edit: Did a quick search, it appears they are very similar, .amf was developed by an ISO commitee, .3mf by a consortium created/led by Microsoft. The .3mf files are little smaller than the .amf, but they both accomplish the same thing in pretty much the same way. FreeCad doesn't offer the .3mf format and I run Fedora as an OS, the one windows machine I do own is on win7, so it looks like I will be trying the .amf format.
You pretty much nailed it. I would also support adopting AMF over 3MF.
Your wish has come through!
People (me included) carry the idea of "if it ain't broke don't fix it"
And the thing with STL is that it has widespread support and is good enough for most people almost every time, which means: it ain't broke.
If this is going to change, there needs to be something about 3MF that makes your end print way way better (not the case) or if 3mf is set as default for most 3d printing pipelines.
Adoption is often not about quality of the tech, we all know betamax is better and yet ...
3MF can store curves.
its like converting from fdm printing to sla for me
3mf is still not the pdf of 3d objects.
What I mean is: it is all good and well, that it stores size, however, it still stores triangles.
I am sure the future is when a file format contains the means to draw it in a printer well, not how it should look like, no matter the size. That way, whatever size I print my sphere on, it will be a sphere to the best of my printing accuracy and the scale of the model.
That day is not tomorrow or in the foreseeable future.
3MF 3MF 3MF
We want it now.
but my DUDES !
you actually sometimes NEED NON-MANIFOLD GEOMETRY
the ideal solution would be to just fix the slicing algorythm so it can deal with non-manifold geometry
If you're thinking "Makes no sense, why would you want non-manifold geometry in the first place ?"
the answer is simple : what if you want to make an edge that's as thin
as the printer can make it, but you don't actually want to look at your
extrusion width and make a solid shape that's exactly that thick, and if
you then decide to alter your extrusion width to get an uneven number
of layers, or even worse, a gap in the middle
If you want to see an extreme example of this, check out the mesh this poor madlad had to design in order for it to get sliced : www.thingiverse.com/thing:3040294
This is a thing that's very very common in aeronautical design
You basically can only afford so much weight until it's too heavy and there's no way you can count on the infill algorithms to do it for you: they're way too inefficient
You need custom internal patterns that are just sturdy enough to maintain the structural integrity, but keep the mass at a minimum.
In my opinion stl is just „good enough“... I think the benefit of 3MF is too small for people to switch, especially since most people are familiar with stl files. But maybe it’s just me since I am mostly printing functional parts and do not require features like scale, color and additional information. Also catia does not support 3MF.
Hi there, CATIA does support 3MF :) ( 3mf.io/adoption/ )
I've seen another commenter mention: with 3MF you could import to fusion 360 or other software and directly edit the object instead of using a workaround. I've had to modify files I only had as STLs and it's not fun, neither in Blender or Fusion, anything to make that easier is welcome.
Yeah, color and dimensions... Where's my Bezier surfaces? It's way more useful than fancy textures. I want to finally use G5. And G2/G3 without running scripts over gcode. We have dirt cheap crystals with FPU now, why not use it?
fusion 360 exports in 3MF now ?
I hear it does!
@@3dpprofessor sire, im sorry if i came top late but i Just buyed my first 3d printer and was learning on what file in Needed to send to prusa sclicer .
Also, stl doesn't make true circles. It makes polygons that look like a circle.
3MF doesn't make true circles either, as far as I know. in fact most cads just approximate them on export. Not a lot of actual spline modeling in real life.
The weird thing about 3MF that I don't like, is that it can store multiple objects in one file, without any indication that there's anything more than a single object inside. If they can sort that out, it'd be great. I'm not sure if Microsoft 3dBuilder is the only one that produces this anomaly or not, but it can be hugely problematic. If you repair a mesh in 3dBuilder, it will dump out the repaired file, as well as all the dodgy bits, and often several variants of its attempted repairs. Reason it's so annoying, is it leaves them all in the same position as the repaired mesh, so if it simply closes a hole, you won't even have a visual indicator that there's a problem. It's not til you go to print, and find it failing, or try to run a process on it in something else, resulting in errors, that you MIGHT realize it if you're lucky.
Apart from that, it is indeed a nice format, but it just seems like such a silly oversight to do something like that.
That's not really the problem of 3MF, that's more the problem of the tools that implement 3MF incorrectly.
Why does this 3mf file need copyright information?
So the file itself can keep track of who made it, where you can find out more information, when it was made, and any other information they want to store. I think it's genius!
@@3dpprofessor Or may determine who will be allowed to use the file or not.
@@luisfj9 That's not copyright. That's DRM, and it's discussed elsewhere here in the comments.
DRM is theoretically possible, but no one has implemented it.
Tinkercad allows you to export as .3MF
Now. You can see Wayne Loosey, developer on Tinkercad, in the comments section here. When this video was posted this wasn't an option.
@@3dpprofessor that took me a while to understand what you meant, but I understand now, and yes, I saw .3mf was added around June or July (I could be wrong) and this video was published in February. I currently use a resin printer with Chitubox, and I don't know if it supports .3mf format. I have been using .obj quite a bit since I figured out that it uses an actual point map instead of triangles, but I don't like having to rename every .obj I export from Tinkercad. And one side note: I had to get used to millimeters, but now that I am, I only use mm in manufacturing.
Try fusion 360
you mentioned copyright. If each file could be protected designers and engineers may insist on that format to protect their work and therefore speed up the process of widespread adoption. However, propagation may also be achieved if the files were easy to copy. As we know copyright piracy is hard to prevent unless you protect the file format. Maybe we'd still be watching in mp1 had not been easy to copy. Netflix would not exist and TH-cam would be Karim, Hurley and, Chen's wet dream. I know we are at the early stages of the home 3d printer revolution. So I would not be surprised if even this wunderkind gets cast aside as did the poor old mp1.
I agree 100% with this evaluation. I hate DRM. Lemme just emphasize how rare it is for me to categorize something under "hate". DRM gets that categorization. And yet, it could be a double edged sword for the adoption of 3MF.
Now, at the moment, no one has implemented DRM in 3MF, but that's not to say it couldn't be done. And if it happens, and when it happens, hoo boy.
@@3dpprofessor I am sure MGM and Metallica would disagree with you and I can see some justification for it but I keep getting the image in my head of a sledgehammer cracking a nut. As we all know since the castration of Napster multi-national conglomerates that distribute and control what we watch and listen to have made bi££ion$ from us. Had there been any protection on the Torrent file system !!! Well, I am quaking in my slippers at the thought of what might have been. Bram Cohen ( May his name be forever spoken with a respectful bow) was not only generous but forward thinking in not protecting his work. He could see the potential it had and still does have for good and perhaps he foresaw what the Multis would have done with it and scored a point for the little guy. Not wanting to get into the torrent argument I'll finish by saying I really enjoy 3d printing, especially when something goes wrong.LLAP
The Copyright Data in 3MF is just a text field to annotate a model with some information about the creator and the license, and has nothing to do with any sort of DRM.
@@alexanderoster3629 Yet. With some of the names in the consortium, I can easily see that changing. 3MF and even AMF has potential outside of 3d printing. I can see it working well in modeling software in general and video games because of the way it maintains the data. As such commercial companies using the format would want some DRM to protect their models.
As for the Metallica vs Napster debate, Lars has since changed his mind on the subject. He has stated that the producers and distributors pushed him in that direction and his opinion at the time was formed solely on the information they gave him.
That said when Napster was in it's prime so was music sales. It was better for discovery than radio, especially for smaller artists that didn't have the money and clout to get airplay. While many were content with the lesser quality mp3's, many people also went out to buy CD's based on the downloaded music. The people that were hurt the worst with the destruction of Napster as we knew it were the little guys.
Quite frankly I can see the same thing happening to thing-a-verse and other file repositories if the majority players begin to exert DRM force in the 3d printing community. The little guys will get squashed.
So what I'm trying to figure out is why now? .3MF has been around for YEARS! I think one of the elements holding it back has been the fact that initially Microsoft was who was pushing it and the Open Source community questions anytime Microsoft back an Open Source idea. That hasn't changed. Personally this feels like an attempt at FOMO with no real improvement outside of guaranteed manifold objects.
so when I change a color of the surface of a model, I have to have a whole other copy of the point data?
and when scaling, all the unit information becomes worthless?
STLs are supposed to be the minimalistic amount of data for a model. adding color and other data bloats the files, hogs ram when editing and all sorts of other nightmares. something committees are notorious for.
and this now doubles(triples?) the storage needed for file repositories? thingiverse already has performance issues, and you want to make it worse?
Yes.
But I see your reasons for not wanting to do that.
@@3dpprofessor yeah, once you get into cloud stuff, people start getting fussy about all sorts of data multiplication
@@Tater1337 "The cloud" also has problems because not everyone has unfettered access to a reliable internet. But screw those guys who live out in the styx, amirite?
Oh wait, that's why I don't stream more often.
3MF is ZIP-compressed, so it is a lot smaller than STL for large files.
Good news Fusion 360 now natively imports & exports 3MF making the second half of this video obsolete 😃
Yay!
The 3d printer world uses mm as their standard dimension. (Even in the US).
This is the unit used by STL.
Why add other units for length? Why not let the 3d printer world keep its current open standard? If the 3d printer community moves away from STL it could find itself paying fees to Redmond like companies for the pleasure of using their file formats.
Are you telling me you've never used an STL that was scaled in inches? Heck, I ran into that just today. Slicers do their best to guess at the desired size of a part and say "Do you want to scale this for inches" exactly because STL *can* describe something stored in inches but has no mechanism to indicate that they are scaled in inches.
3MF isn't owned by any redmond company. It's an open format that has the support of a lot of big players. People thing that means it's not open, but it totally is.
Meh, not a fan of 3mf for printing. I can scale my object in sketchup to whatever i want, then hit export stl, and again, i can choose my units. Since im printing only, no need for texture packs and colors..
18 months later, still no 3MF in Autodesk Fusion.
Or Blender. :(
Every model on thingaverse is non manifold..
Sorry but i have to disagree. The future is .step, the same as the files used for machining. It is already widely adopted in all CAM modules. It has all the features of .3mf, plus it is feature-based. That means no triangles. You can use G2/G3 arc moves in Gcode instead of line segments, which eliminates the need for Jerk. Plus, this is the only way 5-axis 3d printing will ever be possible.
I may have to do some research on the format. I've always been under the impression that zbrush, for instance, could never export a .step file.
3D Printing Professor that depends, does zbrush work natively with triangles? If yes, like meshmixer, it cannot convert to .step, since that is parametric. Parametric (native CAD format) can easily be converted to triangles, but not in reverse
@@faxxzc Which is why I cannot back .step as a standardized format. It's just not inclusive enough. Now, 3MF can, and AMF does support parametric moves and triangles, so why not back the one that doesn't exclude anything?
0:29 And absolutely nothing happened on June 4
STL is horrid, as it isn't a mesh format, but just triangle soup with redundant vertex info. Ironically it is supposed to be limited to manifold (sold, real world) meshes but by no means is designed for them. obj, mtl, texture files are kept separate for instancing / reuse of materials and textures across objects. I'm just starting to read up on the format, so I can implement it. We will see on the difficulty.
Sadly, you didn't communicate some key aspects that make 3MF and the described features more intuitive and natural right from the start, rather than leaving the impression that all the possibilities are crowbarred into a monolithic, hardcoded, black-hole file format: 3MF is human-readable, XML-based, and user-extensible. Go ahead, I dare you to open a 3MF with a simple ZIP-capable unpacker.
Then, your argument about CAD software to output 3MF is silly. 3MF is a mesh format, CAD software doesn't deal well with meshes because that's not their area. CADs deal in solids, geometric descriptions of bodies. To expect a CAD software to be (also) the right tool for meshes is as silly as expecting a hammer to be (also) the right tool for a screw. A screw is a specialised version of an elongated piece of metal used for fastening things, just as a mesh is a specialised format of describing a shape in 3D.
Oh, and there's github.com/3MFConsortium/lib3mf - You don't have to write the entire exporter, they do most the bloody legwork for you! For free! You're welcome.
No, 3mf will just add tons of bloat. Most people use, if they created the files are in the original format, Blender, 3ds Max, etc... All the people need to do is put the Units in the description of the item, or just assume its mm.
For large models, 3MF files can be around half the size of STL, since it uses compression with the underlying ZIP. In fact, you can change the extension on a .3mf to .zip and open it up in any zip archive viewer.
Ok, so what's difference? Why 3MF is better? Size of file? 500k vs 2megs? I don't care, I have 4TB harddrive and 64G SD card, it would fit:) Human readable format? I don't care, I'm not going to read that file manually. Referencing meshes? I don't care, size of file can be bigger... Can it store curved objects based on curves? No... So what is the difference?
5:10
Don't settle for workarounds.
I have uploaded 3mf files to thingiverse without issues.
www.thingiverse.com/thing:2832449/files
-hesit8
3mf is just a zipfile holding several other files in it ..
I'm okay with this.
People dont want 3mf it's just an attempt to add tracking to the files the whole point of 3d manufacturing is to take manufacturing away from the powers that be
STL sucks indeed 1000%