Exporting to STL

Blender can export to STL, which is a fairly standard file format for 3D printing. This section demonstrates the changes that occur to a mesh when exporting and re-importing an STL

Exercise

  • Either save your existing work as a .blend file (File ‣ Save) or load this example
  • File ‣ Export ‣ Stl
  • Select a filename and location
  • Click the Export STL button
  • Import the just-exported STL: (File ‣ Import ‣ Stl).
  • The new object came in right on top of the existing one, so select it and move it out of the way.
  • Switch to Edit Mode after selecting the original and the newly imported version: what’s different?

Various algorithms for working with 3D objects works in triangles, in particular those used for slicing models for printing. The STL format works in triangles (tris), but we were modeling in quads. Exporting an STL implicitly triangulated all faces.