Skip to content
3D PrintBarcelona

How to export an STL that gives no trouble

Resolution, units, watertight meshes and which format to pick. Concrete settings for Fusion 360, SolidWorks, Blender and FreeCAD.

4 min read

Your CAD stores mathematically perfect surfaces. An STL is a triangle mesh approximating them. Exporting always loses information, and the only setting that matters is how much.

CADSolid with dimensionsSTL / 3MFTriangle meshSlicerLayers and pathsPrinterPhysical partEvery step loses information: export at a good resolutionWe start at the second step
We pick things up at the second step. Whatever was lost before that point cannot be recovered.

The three settings that matter

  • Chord tolerance or deviation: 0.01 mm. This is what decides whether a cylinder comes out round or faceted.
  • Units: millimetres. This is the number-one cause of parts arriving ten times too big or too small.
  • Binary, not ASCII. The same model is five times smaller and uploads faster.
SoftwareWhere it is
Fusion 360Export as mesh → Refinement: High
SolidWorksSave as STL → Options → Custom, low deviation
FreeCADMesh → Tessellate → Surface deviation 0.01
BlenderApply modifiers and check the scale before exporting

Working in STEP, IGES or your CAD’s native format? Send it and we convert it free of charge. That beats a bad export.

Keep reading