3D File formats for Industrial Design
July 18, 2008 Category: 3D Modeling
There are several 3D file formats that an industrial designer should be familiar with. These file formats assist in the communication and dissemination of information pertaining to the product development process.
IGES and STEP. These file formats are widely used amongst CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAID ( Computer Aided Industrial Design) programs. All industrial-strength CAID and Mechanical CAD should have support for this format. That means, they should allow the import or export of these formats or both. Alias StudioTools, Rhino 3D both support these formats. Industrial strength Mechanical CAD programs such as Pro-engineer, Unigraphics and Solidworks support these 3D file formats.
STL. These file format is widely accepted as a standard 3D format for transferring data for Rapid Prototyping. All rapid protoyping machines support this file format. All industrial-strength CAID and Mechanical CAD should have support for STL too.
Although 3DS is a widely used 3D file format for general 3D modelling, it is not really ideal for Industrial Design usage. This is because, it is a polygonal file format that works on approximation of shapes. As such, this file format will lack the extreme precise accuracy required for producing physical product parts from the 3D data.
Comments (1)
There is always a place for every software in the 3D scope of working place and every software always has benefits for its strength