sstephan wrote:
Codex404 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:33 am
How would it be a good thing to get rid of STL files while everyone else mainly supplies them? Any model from the internet then suddenly needs to be converted to a not STL file to use it...
Did you ever designed an stl file?
I guess not.
Its not like you wont be able to print stls, they'll simply add support for other file types.
Printing cad files have many advantages, for example adding more infill in highly stressed areas, not just changing the infill on horizontal plane.
You don't often design a STL file, you design the model in whatever application and export it in some universally readable format. Using solidworks, I don't want to bring a solidworks file natively into any software if possible, as the load times are horrid from the system reading the feature tree and translating that as opposed to the simpler process of loading vectors or raw geometry. I know this from several other CAM programs for machining that have native support - a STEP file works beautifully, and loading 30ish simple flat pattern STEP files onto a sheet for nesting takes maybe 5 minutes as opposed to an hour with solidworks parts. The pricing would also increase significantly, as they'd have to pay licensing fees to dassault and whomever, plus a yearly maintenance fee to update to the latest version of all supported CAD systems, even if you only use one. For the software price point, I don't see that enough people would happily pay a couple hundred a year ontop of the original purchase for it's mostly good but limited capabilities compared to higher end 3d printer software.
Against the bigger point of this thread, I don't mind if there's a hefty content patch that you have to pay for to get access, especially if it's a useful one. S3D is far from the only company to offer such a thing - If you're not interested, keep using the version you've got. It won't cost you a thing.