The export resolution should be relative to the size of the printed object, not arbitrarily set to some ridiculously high resolution. As you know, in Solidworks the STL export resolution is determined by the size of the angle or curved surfaces. Exporting the model part below at 1° resolution, results in a 225MB model with 4.7M triangles. The problem is that a ton of those polygons are in the tiny little balls that simulate the rivets. Solidworks does not have the ability to selectively set the resolution on a per surface basis, so each one of these little bumps is made up of 64440 triangles, and there are 16 of them for roughly 1M triangles.
Do you see any reason why something that is roughly 1mm in diameter should be made up of 64440 triangles, and eat up 3MB of data? I donât so I decimate selectively. But on the other hand I look at the part as a whole, and considering the entire part is 42mm, I see no reason why I should export it at 1° resolution the first place.
So here is a comparison between the model exported at 1° resolution and at 3°. And remember, this part is 42mm wide from one end of the foot pad to the other.
The lower resolution part has only 563K polygons and is 26.8MB, roughly 1/10th of the original size, And for all intents and purposes, the Form printerâs resolution is not high enough to resolve these small polygons so that you can see the individual facets.
Edit: As a side note, when saving binary STLâs, you can estimate the exact size of the output file as long as you know how many triangles are in the model. The STL file format dedicates 50 bytes to each triangle, and adds a 84 byte overhead as the descriptor.
So a 10,000 triangle model, will result in a file 500,084 byte file (10,000 x 50 + 84). A 200 million polys part mentioned before, would be roughly 9.5GB. Shrinking it down to about 120MB would reduce he poly count down to about 2.4M. So Sculptingmanâs math is a little off.
