C-130J Plaque Modelling

[Tod1d (Tod (with 1 'd'))]

@jtclose

What are the rules on acceptable STL file for CC Pro ?
Are both ASCII and Binary acceptable ?
Are inch and MM acceptable ?

Only Binary is accepted by CC. It will take inch or metric, but read them both as metric.
Which doesn’t matter because CC scales it automatically. You just might see some really big scale values, but you can enter actual size anyways.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Only binary files work in CC Pro current versions.

ASCII files have to be converted to binary:

Importing ASCII format STL files

If presented with a set of STL files in ASCII format such as: [image] which will not import into Carbide Create Pro, they must be opened in a 3rd party tool such as Microsoft’s 3D Builder: [image] and re-saved as a binary STL which will then import as expected: body_binary.stl (1.8 MB) [image]

[jtclose (James Close)]

I recreated the STL files in binary format with mm units.
I changed the inputs to create a a result that was 257 mm x 200 mm.
I changed the Z value to 0.4 mm otherwise the peaks/valleys were too much.

I am not a fan of the results, but I learned something.

Both STL files are in this zip file.

C130JRedo.zip

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

The problem here is that a pixel image which uses light/dark to show light/dark does not work well to communicate the height/depth which is wanted.

This is discussed in a video which @KevBarn14 did a while back, perhaps:

Amazing 3D Art with CNC - STL Imports for Carbide Create

[NancynBob (Bob Griffith)]

Thanks for all the comments, suggestions and education this has triggered. I’ve even checked out a couple of STLs from other sources and tried modelling them. My conclusion is about the same as all of yours. Result just doesn’t look that great. So, throwing in the towel on the 3D C-130 and am going to line drawing. I’ve cleaned up most of the faults that I’ve found. Only need to try to add USA flag to the tail and I think I’ll have the art work complete.