Its CAM features are the most user-friendly we’ve found. If that’s your plan and you haven’t done it before, we like Fusion 360 a lot. You can now import your STEP file into other software and do things like generate tooling paths for milling on a CNC mill.

From the Export dialog, choose “STEP with colors (*.step *.stp)”.Įxporting your Solid to a STEP file.

Select your newly created solid file in the left pane.

If it works, you’ll see a new item in the list in the left pane that ends in “(Solid).”.

From the Part menu, choose “Convert to solid.”.

If you get a red error message in the bottom left corner of the screen, you’re out of luck. This is the moment of truth! If FreeCAD is able to convert the shape to a solid, you’ll be able to save it as a STEP file.

Leave the Sewing Tolerance at 0.10 (you can select a lower value if you want more detailed surface) and click OK.

From the Part menu, choose “Create shape from mesh.”.

From the toolbar dropdown menu, choose Part.

However, you should still try the next steps in case you get lucky.

If clicking the Repair button for any other option makes your mesh look terrible, you’re likely out of luck.

If clicking the Repair button for “Folds on Surface” makes your mesh look terrible, you can skip that one.

One by one, go down the list, clicking Analyze and then Repair if the analysis finds any problems.

Select the mesh from the dropdown at the top of the Evaluate & Repair pane.

Open the Evaluate & Repair mesh tool (Meshes menu > Analyze > Evaluate & Repair mesh).

From the dropdown menu in the top toolbar, choose Mesh design.

Import your STL file (File menu > Import > select your STL file).

Our conversion tool of choice is FreeCAD because it’s free, relatively simple to use, and does a good job of converting STL files to usable solid models. That being said, if you have no other option, it’s definitely worth a shot! STEP 1: DOWNLOAD A CONVERSION TOOL If your STL file is of the second type, you won’t be able to convert it. Others are extremely complex, full of holes and have many self-intersections, and will cause the crash of the conversion program. Some of them are low-complexity, watertight, and can be easily converted.

Online .stl file to gcode converter