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+--- Thread: Exporting to .stl (/showthread.php?tid=265)
Exporting to .stl - aramsey8 - 03-26-2013
Please provide some guidance to a first time export effort. I am unclear on how to set the scale so that my desired dimensions are rendered in an stl file. I understand that WU are not set to a particular scale, but have also read that they have a default value. How do I set the scale so that the final product (to be produced on a 3d printer) has the actual size I want. Is there a place where I enter, for example, 1 WU - 1 inch?
I've tried for hours to find the answer online
Sincerely thanks,
Andrew
RE: Exporting to .stl - studiof - 03-26-2013
Wings Units.. A Wings Unit (wu) is arbitrary in size and can be thought of in terms of any real world units desired. The Wings grid is composed of squares each 1x1 wu in size. The standard Wings cube is cube is 2 x 2 x 2 Wings Units in size. If building a model from scratch you can arbitarily decide that a wu will represent inches, feet, meters or miles; whichever is most appropriate for the task at hand.
i was wondering about that too :-)
RE: Exporting to .stl - aramsey8 - 03-26-2013
Thank you. Everything you said I have indeed figured out since my model is fairly complex. Now I'm just trying to make 1 WU = 1 inch for the 3d printer, argh. lol
RE: Exporting to .stl - oort - 03-26-2013
The scale you need will depend on the software you are importing the files into. I don't know what the scale should be and unless you can find someone who has done this before you will have to do a test file with a cube that is 1WU x 1WU x 1WU. I would think that the software that works with the 3d printer should be able to tell you what size it comes in as. If your 1x1x1 cube comes in at 2x2x2 then you need to set your scale to 0.5 but you will probably not be so lucky to have an exact number like that....
. I would also think that the 3D printer software would have the ability to scale the model up or down if it does not come in at the right scale. After your first model you would then know what scale to use... 
oort