We went a little bit over the history and background of additive manufacturing and 3D Printing on Friday with Alex. 3D Printing was once called rapid prototyping because first it was cost-effective, and it allowed, with the means at hand, to quickly create a “cheap” product to visualize how functional it was.
A question came up, is it possible to go from a STL to a CAD file? Well, not really. Converting an STL file to a CAD file is not possible because a STL file is only a mesh representation of what you want to print. Meaning it approximately represents the surfaces of your part in terms of triangles, so it doesn’t have the dimensions that you used to create the model and all the features included- this is what a CAD needs to be able to model your part.

Then we had a practice session where Emily and Sam explained how the software work, and Alex how the 3D Printing machines work.