Memory issues converting meshes to .stls - workaround?

[KarenI]

I have only run Freecad once now after finding information on how to convert meshes to .stls - a friend found a CNC mesh she wants to 3d print, and I've also bought some smaller files online to do the same. She and I both want to do these in 1/12th scale. I'm familiar with Mastercam and Sketchup, so Freecad wasn't too hard to figure out.

Information I've found online to open and convert a mesh to .stl worked (I checked the file for errors and there were none), except for the amount of memory Freecad took up in doing it - I shut it down when it was up to 7 of the 8G I have in this box.

Is there a way to keep Freecad from eating memory when converting?

[chrisb]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Is there a way to keep Freecad from eating memory when converting?

No.
FreeCAD is not at all optimized for meshes and representing them in FreeCAD requires a lot of overhead. Yet the mesh bears less information. Think of a cylinder: for FreeCAD you have the base with a center and the radius, and the height. An STL would have a hole bunch of triangles to approximate the cylinder surface, yet it stays a tesselation.

[vocx]

...She and I both want to do these in 1/12th scale. ...

An STL file is a Mesh already.

If you just want to manipulate a mesh and scale it down, maybe you'd have better luck with a different program, like Blender, which is designed to work with meshes in a better way than FreeCAD could. FreeCAD's strengths are in solid modelling in a parametric way, which is different from manipulating meshes.

[TheMarkster]

Should be able to scale them in cura without needing to open them in FreeCAD first.

[mrdic]

Cura slices .obj and other formats as well as .stl, so conversion to .stl mightn't even be needed. Fused filament printing and Cura aren't even fussy about watertightness and shared edges and vertices that return error flags as .stl faults.

[Roy_043]

Note that there is a Mesh_Scale command. I can't imagine that this command would consume a lot of memory.

[jmaustpc]

a friend found a CNC mesh she wants to 3d print

do you know exactly which mesh format the file is?

rom eating memory when converting?

Sounds like it is a very complex mesh. Is it freely publicly available to view or download from somewhere?