Read our Meshmixer tutorial with 15 pro tips for editing STL files for 3D printing.Īutodesk’s Netfabb distinguishes itself by being geared towards engineers with its advanced 3D printing preparation capabilities. Its additional possibilities and free availability make it a clear number one. Meshmixer is also a useful tool to edit STL files, resculpt entire sections, as well as optimize and finalize 3D models. It combines a user-friendly interface with all the options needed to repair complex mesh errors. This typically guarantees model integrity, so use additional tools only when requiring more advanced functions.īased on our explorations, the best STL repair tool is Meshmixer. For Formlabs customers, PreForm print preparation software already has Autodesk Netfabb’s automated repair and part packing functions embedded to prepare 3D models upon import.

Note: Several software packages contain mesh repair functionalities, such as FreeCAD, SketchUp, 3D Studio Max, and Rhinoceros, as well as online services such as Willit 3D Print, MakePrintable, 3DPrinterOS, SculptGL, and Shapeways. As described in our Meshmixer tutorial, there are several other useful formats such as AMF, Collada, OBJ, and PLY, with specialized qualities for storing material, color, rendering, 3D scanning, and 3D printing information. STL files in a Binary format since it further reduces file size. The most popular and storage-friendly format is STL (StereoLiThography), which we will use for this article.

Manual repair by deleting and creating triangles. Stitching open edges and remaining holes. This typically requires recalculating entire portions of the mesh.įiltering out double faces, double vertices, inverted normals, and sharp, narrow triangles. Some comprehensive STL repair programs allow different ways of hole filling, such as planar, tangent, ruled, or freeform. It can contain multiple continuous surfaces that ideally are joined together while obsolete ones need removal.Ĭlosing holes, bridging gaps. A mesh consists of collections of connected triangles. The STL repair software’s wizard will attempt to fix all major errors, including holes, separate shells, and intersections.

A typical STL file repair workflow contains the following steps:Īuto-repair.

Autodesk stl viewer