Does anyone have recommendations on what CAD software to use to convert an STL mesh back into a solid model? I’ve been wanting to do some remixes on things I find on Thingiverse, but I don’t want to start from scratch. I currently use OnShape. I’m trying to stay in the ‘free’ zone for CAD software.
Fusion360 has usually-reasonable STL import behavior.
It is free-for-hobbyists rather than Free, but it is a powerful tool.
http://tinkercad.com also imports STL
I just popped out a bit of research and am quite surprised to see that OnShape does not support STL files in an editable manner.
I’ll second Paul Eberhart’s suggestion to use Fusion 360 to process your STL. I’ve been able to edit STL files in Fusion 360 after performing a process involving converting the mesh to Brep. It’s not particularly difficult, even with zero experience in Fusion 360, as there are plenty of forums and YouTube videos to cover the conversion.
Another aspect of using F360 to import and convert your file is that you can then export it in a form compatible with OnShape, if you’re more comfortable editing in that program.
I use Freecad and Fusion 360 along with Cura, Proterface if I just need to do some manual g codes to the printer. Free cad is really easy to pickup. Plenty of YouTube vids. once you get fairly good with FreeCAD grab the free version of Fusion 360 “education”. Microsoft now include the 3d editor and viewer/slicer, but it needs a little more work.
Ik tinkercad could work but I’m not for sure. Never tried it the other way
Fusion360. I’ve tried so many things but the time sink is significant. It’s a complicated problem. “Crop, focus, enhance”… its just not real. But “tweak, correct, extend, mash-up”… that’s realistic.
I often end up redrawing it or slamming a down and dirty mashup together. If people provide original design files, that’s the dream. If you redraw, give YOURS away for the next guy.
We sooooo need a versioning tool that makes iteration like this possible. It would need to constrain us to a given file format like step files but would be a huge payoff.
Import as is then intersect and merge.
@Brook_Drumm grabcad is a good place to start when looking for real 3D CAD files.
Also consider https://www.meshmixer.com.
Both @Thomas_Sanladerer and Maker’s Muse on Youtube have recently done videos using MeshMixer to repair and to also modify files in creative ways.
Meshmixer can be a fun tool for editing STL files. It would not easily create the type of model Daniel Jackman seeks if he intends to load it into OnShape. One might suspect from the choice of program that the model is parametric and not well suited to programs such as Blender or Meshmixer.
Just found a plugin for OnShape (but haven’t had a chance to take a look yet, please chime in here if you do): https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1953/have-you-ever-wanted-to-read-a-stl-file-into-onshape