Re: STL binary formats!

From: Michael Brindley
To: RP-ML
Date: Tuesday, September 20, 1994
Subject: Re: STL binary formats! 
> I consider the binary format of the STL file property of 3D Systems.  It
> can be broken
> and dissected by the various computer science methods.  Since I consider
> this a violation
> of their software and we(universities) are often accused of reinventing
> SLA,    I would rather see rapid
> protoyping vendors agree to a format that is open to all third party
> software generators.
>

Dr. Paul Jacobs of 3D Systems has publicly stated that the STL file
format is a public specification.  Call 3D and ask the tech support
people for a copy of the STL file format specification.  You may
have to ask more than once (I asked three times) to get around an
internal blockage that they use to have.  In the spec. it states
that the ASCII format is intended to be used primarily for debugging
CAD software.  So, use the binary format all you want.  In fact,
the term "STL file" refers almost exclusively to the binary format
as no one uses the ASCII format (who would want to?).

I had intended to summarize the binary STL file format and put that
document up on chinalake (the three-dimensional object depository)
for ftp, but I never got around to it.  I did get permission to do
so from Paul Jacobs and Chuck Hull this summer at the Dayton conference.

  --> Mike Brindley