Notes on the Engineering Formats

STL, IGES and DXF files are exportable from FastSCAN in a variety of types.

FastSCAN supports both ASCII and binary STL files. The specification of binary STL stipulates that data should be stored in little-endian (also known as network) byte order. Most programs actually seem to use big-endian (Intel and MIPS) order, so that is the default. If a file fails to load, particularly on a little-endian machine, try exporting with byte swapping enabled. This problem does not exist for ASCII mode STL files. The byte order of various architectures is big-endian for Intel, MIPS; little-endian for SPARC, PowerPC, Motorola 68000, and most others.

IGES is a format that can be used to exchange many different types of data. FastSCAN can save three different types of IGES - Entity 116: A cloud of points; Entity 128: A triangle mesh with each triangle represented as a separate B-spline surface (this format is very inefficient and many programs may run out of memory when trying to load it, however it can be the only way of getting your data into some of the various CAD packages); Entity 106: A triangle mesh with optional normal vectors; Entity 126 (beta): Spline curves.

FastSCAN supports DXF cloud of point or triangular mesh data, the latter as 3DFACE or POLYLINE, which may be supported differently by various programs.

Rhino model files can be converted from FastSCAN's OBJ files using Objto3dm.

The Mannequin Head sample above can be downloaded for each of these types:

Meshes

Sections

Screen shot of IGES type 126 format (sections)