Interesting what he has to say about exporting STL vs Step.
It looks like “smart infill” is going to be a thing in the near future. I’m hopeful it will encompass holes.
Some practical notes from printing a lot of exported parts:
- If your slicer reads STEP (PrusaSlicer 2.6+, Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer all do), send it STEP. The slicer then meshes the true curves itself, so you skip the export-resolution guesswork entirely.
- If you have to use STL, export at the highest resolution. Low-resolution STLs turn holes into polygons, and a polygon’s flats sit inside the true circle, so holes come out a little undersized. On small holes for pins or screws that’s often the whole 0.1-0.2 mm you end up drilling out.
- 3MF is a decent middle ground when you’re sending a file to someone else: it’s still a mesh, but it carries units, so nobody opens your part at 1/25 scale.
- Whatever format you pick, a quick test plate with a few hole sizes (3, 5, 8 mm) tells you more about your printer’s hole compensation than any setting does.
On the “smart infill” point: Orca already has per-region modifiers you can place around holes to add perimeters there, which covers most of what I’d want until something automatic shows up.