STL Import for Solid Edge is a Stereolithography (.stl) file import add-in for Solid Edge®. This plug-in gives Solid Edge the ability to import geometric data from ASCII and Binary STL files.

STL Import for Solid Edge reads polygon mesh data stored in STL files and imports it into Solid Edge. A polygon mesh in a STL file is comprised of a set of triangular faces. STL Import for Solid Edge creates trimmed planar surfaces for each triangle/quad and knits them together to create a body. If the polygon mesh is closed (i.e. it does not contain boundary edges) then STL Import for Solid Edge will create a closed body feature, otherwise an open surface will be created.

STL Import for Solid Edge is very easy to use. Once installed, it automatically loads itself into Solid Edge and adds a new submenu called "STL Import for Solid Edge" to the Solid Edge Applications menu.

The `STL Import for Solid Edge` menu consists of the following commands:
# Import - Import a STL file
# Help - Display the STL Import for Solid Edge help file
# Register - Register your copy of STL Import for Solid Edge
# About - Display the STL Import for Solid Edge About box

STL Import for Solid Edge comes with detailed documentation for each command as well as a tutorial to get you started in the shortest possible time.


The STL File Format

The STL file format is the Rapid Prototyping industry`s standard data transmission format and is the format required to interact with stereolithography machines. Stereolithography files contain solids which are made up of 3 sided facets. STL files may be ASCII or binary data, although binary is far more common due to the resulting size of the CAD data when saved to the ASCII format. A STL file describes a raw unstructured triangulated surface by the unit normal and vertices (ordered by the right-hand rule) of the triangles using a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.