Hi there
Trouble shooting , please. The Preform software can’t open stl files.
Files that downloaded from Thingiverse are OK, but those from my 3D Cad are not OK.
Cad software: Solidworks 2007
Preform version: 1.8.2
Computer: ASUS laptop X61 series
OS: Win Vista Home Premium
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo CPU T6400
RAM: 2GB
Y.F. Lin
Try opening the file with Netfabb (free) and see if it has any major errors. Even if everything is fine, export it with this program again and see what happens. Just to rule out a faulty save-feature in your Solidworks. I use Solidworks 2013 and have no isses saving stl’s and opening them in Preform. STL-settings don’t have any impact either.
If that doesn’t work, you can always send an object to me and i’ll see if I can export it properly. I can hardly believe it could be anything else than exporting issues.
Alex, thanks for your comment.
I think I just found the solution.
Not only the file name has to be alphabet but also the path.
After I had changed the path name, everything seemed to be OK.
My resins haven’t arrived yet so I can’t print at this moment.
PS: I’m an Asian and my computer is not English version.
Doh… Now you mention it… I had that same issue with one of my stl’s months ago… I re-exported it and renamed it (I guess properly) and it worked. Never realised it was the renaming that did the trick.
Nice catch!
Earlier versions of SolidWorks weren’t that great at exporting STLs and importing them used to be a royal PITA. I think it was SW 2011 when we saw a big improvement. As @Alex_Vermeer said SW 2013 works perfectly, I’m on 2014 and again no problems.
You could try importing it into meshmixer and then go… Analysis > Inspector > Auto Repair all. Normaly works for me 
Can confirm: exporting from SolidWorks 2015 works pretty well. Maybe 15% of the time PreForm will have to repair the mesh (I have the STL export settings cranked up to max, so I usually have huge files… that may be where the 15% comes from)
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