Re: [rp-ml] Colour STL files?

From: steve <sjbaker1_at_airmail.net>
Date: Tue Dec 05 2006 - 01:43:23 EET

Todd Pederzani wrote:
> steve wrote:
>> Ignoring the many versions of the binary STL specification out there
> As a side note, I see a lot or references to a July 1988 and October
> 1989 "Stereolithography Interface Specification", but I cannot find the
> document anywhere on the Internet. I also can't find a valid
> specification for SolidView's color STL format or Magic's format
> (there's an RP-ML post about the latter, but the linked document is no
> longer there).
>
> I agree that there are interoperability issues at work here. The most
> obvious one seems to be not publishing the specification. I'd expect
> that if 3D Systems put up their spec, it would be ranked very well, so
> programmers wouldn't take reverse engineerings of the format as gospel.

Yeah - I was offered a copy of the specification - but under terms
which fobade me to disclose it to third parties! That's not much use
when trying to write a Wikipedia article so I had to delete it without
reading it!

However, I did get enough information from other people (along with
some sample files that I could analyse to confirm what I was told).
So I now understand how the colour information is added and I've
put that into the Wikipedia article entitled "STL (file format)".

It's not a specification (in formal terms) - but it'll do.

Meanwhile, I've been reading about the PLY format (which I also
wrote a Wikipedia article about) - that is an INFINITELY more
well designed format - it's fairly well supported and it's a
totally open standard.

PLY ought to be the format of choice - sadly, STL is still
the de'facto standard. I strongly urge all software vendors
to support (at a minimum) PLY and COLLADA and to try to wean
their customers off of STL as fast as they can run away!
Received on Tue Dec 05 00:30:04 2006

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