STL Import for Inventor is a Stereolithography (.stl) file import add-in for Inventor®. This add-in gives Inventor the ability to import polygon data from ASCII and Binary STL files.
STL Import for Inventor reads polygon mesh data stored in STL files and imports it into Inventor. A polygon mesh in a STL file is comprised of a set of triangular faces. STL Import for Inventor creates trimmed planar surfaces for each triangle/quad and knits them together to create a body. If the polygon mesh is closed (i.e. it does not contain boundary edges) then STL Import for Inventor will create a closed body feature, otherwise an open surface will be created.
STL Import for Inventor is very easy to use. Once installed, it automatically loads itself into Inventor and adds a new menu called "STLImport" to the Inventor menu.
The 'STLImport' submenu consists of the following commands:
Import - Import a STL file
Help - Display the STL Import for Inventor help file
Register - Register your copy of STL Import for Inventor
About - Display the STL Import for Inventor 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.