combine parts into one part??

[Eureka]

HI,

i have to make some .stl files for materialising.

The problem is I want to combine different parts as one part.

I think it's not possible to make an .stl from an assembly?!

So is there any possibility to combine some parts into one part so i can save it as an .stl file??

Many thanks to answer my problem.

 

[gplacinta]

I don't know if Inventor can do that alone, but in my experience, a separate translating program is very useful. There are a lot of them out there, but the one that I have been using a lot is called Transmagic (http://www.transmagic.com). If you go to their website, I am pretty sure you can download a trial version, and can use that to translate your files into .stl with no problem. Its a pretty cool program because it also lets you choose how you want to translate [such as grouping certain parts together as one part, or a whole assembly together as a large part]. The only thing is that it doesn't recognize inventor .ipt/.iam's so you have to save them as something else first [i usually do .sat because its quicker to open than .stp]

Hope this helps,

George

 

[PeterCharles]

http://www.mcadforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5980

 

[gplacinta]

haha sweet, that link made more sense. i didn't even think to try to save a file as an .stl from a derived part.

 

[fergusda]

Merging .STL

download MeshLab (free). It has tools for merging multiple meshes, creating water tight volumes, and other goodies.

-Dan
Global Inspection Solutions
Global Inspection Solutions, 3D Scanning - Reverse Engineering - 3D Inspection

 

[CADAgnostic]

Some options for combining parts

I thought I'd chime in here because these things don't come up much, but when they do, they can really slow you down. First thing is, TransMagic can now read native Inventor files (as well as CATIA, Solidworks, Solid Edge, NX, Creo, DWG, etc. But more importantly, if you need to combine parts as one, there are two ways to do it:

1. You can do a boolean Union and then save it out to STL.
2. You can also Flatten the entire assembly to a single part and save that to STL. Flatten turns parts into solid bodies and the main assembly becomes a part. Here's more about Flatten:
https://transmagic.com/flatten-assembly-and-convert-to-assembly/
3. Somewhat related, you can save the entire assembly out to individual STL files using Atomize. You can atomize to any format your package supports, so it's a quick way to generate the parts of a large assembly automatically - here's more about Atomize: https://transmagic.com/cad-atomization/

TransMagic also has a Polygon Reduction tool to help you intuitively reduce polys, and some nuanced settings for STL out to get the mesh density you need.

Realize this is a late reply but maybe it will help someone else!