I’ve been using a certain software to convert my Solidworks models to .stl files (meshes) for quite some time now. I’ve used it over the years due to my career, but I find it absolutely awesome in this area. After reading the forums for a while now, I thought I’d share some info about it, and hopefully give a little back to the community that I’ve learned so much from.
The software is called GOM Inspect. It’s primarily used in the metrology field for scan editing and measurement, but it does SO much more. You can import cad files, convert them to a mesh and save the mesh. You can repair, thin, edit, etc… While it’s not a dedicated mesh editing tool like Autodesk Maya, it’s still incredibly powerful. And it’s FREE. The company that provides the software has a much larger software package that in used with their hardware, so they released this version as freeware.
Here’s a link to the page on their website - GOM Inspect
There’s only one bug that I’m aware of, and that is that the software doesn’t always play nice with ATI video cards. If you try the software and run into a problem where things don’t look right (especially while rotating), it’s probably due to this). You can work around this bug by changing a setting in the preferences to use software rendering instead of hardware rendering.
If anyone has any questions about this software at all, please feel welcome to post or PM me. I’ve used it for 8 years now, and have done training for the manufacturer. I’ll help you out if I can. Just my way of contributing to the community!