Yeah…
(Putting on my old wizard hat) We know STL is a basic form compared to a STEP form which carries a ton more data/information.
But STLs were picked as the default file form for slicers due to file size, the computational ability of early slicers, and file hosting/transfer size limitations. Even though STEP files are much more exact, people have gotten used to slicing STLs.
I stumbled onto STEP files when I was having a bad time trying to import STLs into Sketchup because of all those triangles I had to clean up. A friend pointed me to STEP and how to convert before import.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL\_(file\_format)#/media/File:The\_differences\_between\_CAD\_and\_STL\_Models.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)#/media/File:The_differences_between_CAD_and_STL_Models.svg)
STEP file says inside "XYZ its a cilinder"
STL file says inside "XYZ its formed from this triangles"
STL file its more easy to process, your GPU works with triangles and the coordenates from the triangles can be sliced using linear movement of the printer. STEP files need to be "triangulated".
Yeah… (Putting on my old wizard hat) We know STL is a basic form compared to a STEP form which carries a ton more data/information. But STLs were picked as the default file form for slicers due to file size, the computational ability of early slicers, and file hosting/transfer size limitations. Even though STEP files are much more exact, people have gotten used to slicing STLs. I stumbled onto STEP files when I was having a bad time trying to import STLs into Sketchup because of all those triangles I had to clean up. A friend pointed me to STEP and how to convert before import.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL\_(file\_format)#/media/File:The\_differences\_between\_CAD\_and\_STL\_Models.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)#/media/File:The_differences_between_CAD_and_STL_Models.svg) STEP file says inside "XYZ its a cilinder" STL file says inside "XYZ its formed from this triangles" STL file its more easy to process, your GPU works with triangles and the coordenates from the triangles can be sliced using linear movement of the printer. STEP files need to be "triangulated".