I've been thinking about the advantages of generating stl formatted files, compared to, say, polyhedrons outside of openscad. In the experiments that I have made (not many) it seems that much of the specification for stls is superfluous wrt opnscad import of ascii stl files. The following is acceptable by openscad, for example when imported as an stl  (all of it between the *****) ***** solid  generated by testing lets call it anything/nothing   outer loop       vertex   4 4 4  straight line       vertex  5 5 5       vertex   80 80 80  outer loop       vertex   5 2  10       vertex   8 8 0       vertex   1 7 7 outer loop       vertex   6 6 6       vertex   1 -8 4       vertex  5 9 0 endsolid whatever ***** Not sure if it can be further simplified. If it is exported again by openscad, it is exported as a binary, and most other stl readers recognise it. In the above remove the text 'straight line', and the line is drawn, but as it has zero width, it won't be seen, but ctrl-shift-V will increase the view area to include it. It seems that any text, other than keywords, seems to  comment out  the whole loop.

On 01.09.22 00:40, Raymond West wrote: > I have made (not many) it seems that much of the > specification for stls is superfluous wrt opnscad > import of ascii stl files. Well, the full argument is: With the current specific OpenSCAD version I'm running, this file happens to read successfully and produce the same result as a similar "valid" file. That may change at any time without warning or notice. As STL is badly defined, "valid" is a bit of a gray area already. ciao, Torsten.

On 01/09/2022 06:40, Raymond West wrote: > I've been thinking about the advantages of generating stl formatted > files, compared to, say, polyhedrons outside of openscad. In the > experiments that I have made (not many) it seems that much of the > specification for stls is superfluous wrt opnscad import of ascii stl > files. > > The following is acceptable by openscad, for example when imported as > an stl  (all of it between the *****) > > ***** > > solid  generated by testing lets call it anything/nothing > >   outer loop >       vertex   4 4 4  straight line >       vertex  5 5 5 >       vertex   80 80 80 >  outer loop >       vertex   5 2  10 >       vertex   8 8 0 >       vertex   1 7 7 > outer loop >       vertex   6 6 6 >       vertex   1 -8 4 >       vertex  5 9 0 > > endsolid whatever > > ***** > > Not sure if it can be further simplified. If it is exported again by > openscad, it is exported as a binary, and most other stl readers > recognise it. In the above remove the text 'straight line', and the > line is drawn, but as it has zero width, it won't be seen, but > ctrl-shift-V will increase the view area to include it. It seems that > any text, other than keywords, seems to  comment out  the whole loop. > STL models are 'triangle soup', but that they have specific requirements on the vertices and edges and most apps require them to be 'water tight' (i.e. no holes). In other words it is simply a mesh. Any reasonably complex model can have huge number of triangles, STL files in the megabytes are common. As such, it is normally not 'manually typed' unlike csg command based representations e.g. OpenSCAD files.

On 01/09/2022 06:40, Raymond West wrote: > I've been thinking about the advantages of generating stl formatted > files, compared to, say, polyhedrons outside of openscad. In the > experiments that I have made (not many) it seems that much of the > specification for stls is superfluous wrt opnscad import of ascii stl > files. > > The following is acceptable by openscad, for example when imported as > an stl  (all of it between the *****) > > ***** > > solid  generated by testing lets call it anything/nothing > >   outer loop >       vertex   4 4 4  straight line >       vertex  5 5 5 >       vertex   80 80 80 >  outer loop >       vertex   5 2  10 >       vertex   8 8 0 >       vertex   1 7 7 > outer loop >       vertex   6 6 6 >       vertex   1 -8 4 >       vertex  5 9 0 > > endsolid whatever > > ***** > > Not sure if it can be further simplified. If it is exported again by > openscad, it is exported as a binary, and most other stl readers > recognise it. In the above remove the text 'straight line', and the > line is drawn, but as it has zero width, it won't be seen, but > ctrl-shift-V will increase the view area to include it. It seems that > any text, other than keywords, seems to  comment out  the whole loop. > Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)> has a nice article about it. Found another article about STL rules https://ebrary.net/158117/engineering/format_specifications <https://ebrary.net/158117/engineering/format_specifications> "Facet orientation: The facet defines the surface of a three-dimensional object. As such, each facet is part of the boundary between the inside and the outside of the object. The orientation of the facets (which path is “out” and which path is “in”) is given redundantly in two ways that must be consistent. The direction of the normal is outward, first. Second, the vertices are seen in the anti-clockwise order when looking at the object from the outside (right-hand rule). These rules are shown in Figure 2.2." "Vertex-to-vertex rule: Each triangle must share two vertices with each of its neighboring triangles. In other words, the vertex of one triangle cannot lie on the other side. This is shown in Figure 2.3. The object shown must be placed in the all-positive octant. In other words, all vertex coordinates must be positive-defined (non-negative and non-zero) numbers." 'water tight' I'd guess is not specified in the rules. But that for 'true solids' I'd guess the STL triangle mesh surfaces must wrap the solid such that there is 'no holes'. I think i came across some articles which mentioned that some of the meshes, i.e. the 'holes' can be repaired. Some algorithms and apps apparently has features to do that.