I finally got around to updating to the latest and greatest. We wait for a slow time to avoid nasty surprises when we are on deadline. Very nice - especially “text”, which eliminates about half of my STL hacking. (we pause for polite giggling as this reveals how long it’s been since we upgraded). But, on that topic - I have extensive needs to import fairly large STL files and either incorporate them into designs, or use OpenSCAD to do simple modifications (for example, carving away pieces). Alas, I believe that memory limitations are making this infeasible for many of the STL files I need to process. So, I end up writing a lot of ad hoc STL-modification programs (in Java, mostly) to do what I need. It’s not that difficult, but it’s tedious. I would appreciate clues on how to MAXIMIZE the amount of memory available to OpenSCAD, and also some better diagnostics when OpenSCAD fails to open an STL file. All I see now is “could not open file”, when the file is perfectly well formatted, but perhaps large. Other programs open the file just fine. I’m assuming it’s a memory problem - but no error message tells me that. No reason is given, at all - simply “could not open”. So: a) how do I find our *why* an .stl file fails to open, and b) if it is a memory issue, how do I maximize the amount of memory available to OpenSCAD to use when opening .stl files? -- Kenneth Sloan KennethRSloan@gmail.com <mailto:KennethRSloan@gmail.com> Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

On 08/18/2015 06:55 PM, Kenneth Sloan wrote: > a) how do I find our *why* an .stl file fails to open, and > Just opening the file (only import statement, nothing else) already fails? > b) if it is a memory issue, how do I maximize the amount of > memory available to OpenSCAD to use when opening .stl files? > Without looking at the details, the only suggestion would be to check if it's a 64 bit OpenSCAD running on a 64 bit System. Can you share some specific example cases with all the files? ciao, Torsten.

Yes - just : import(“file.stl”, convexity=10); fails I’ll try to create a concrete example, and perhaps experiment to nail down whether or not it’s a size issue. Since file size is an issue (potentially) - please send (privately) an e-mail address to receive instructions on fetching the files. But…I’m on deadline for the next few days and don’t have a lot of time to spend working on this - sorry. I’ll try… -- Kenneth Sloan KennethRSloan@gmail.com Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. > On Aug 18, 2015, at 12:11 , Torsten Paul <Torsten.Paul@gmx.de> wrote: > > On 08/18/2015 06:55 PM, Kenneth Sloan wrote: >> a) how do I find our *why* an .stl file fails to open, and >> > Just opening the file (only import statement, nothing else) already > fails? > >> b) if it is a memory issue, how do I maximize the amount of >> memory available to OpenSCAD to use when opening .stl files? >> > Without looking at the details, the only suggestion would be to > check if it's a 64 bit OpenSCAD running on a 64 bit System. > > Can you share some specific example cases with all the files? > > ciao, > Torsten. > > > _______________________________________________ > OpenSCAD mailing list > Discuss@lists.openscad.org > http://lists.openscad.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.openscad.org