search

KittyCAD / modeling-app

The KittyCAD modeling app.
https://kittycad.io/modeling-app/download
MIT License
366 stars 29 forks source link

Suggestion: guide users to choose an appropriate export format #1192

Open alteous opened 9 months ago

alteous commented 9 months ago

The consensus on Slack is most CAD users are not going to be familiar with the pros and cons of each format.

https://kittycadworkspace.slack.com/archives/C05FUP68WSG/p1702033448827079

I'd like to rework the export user interface to suggest a format to the user based on a set of tags. This would be alongside the existing interface so that users that know exactly what they need are not obstructed.

I suggest a scoring system from one to five (higher is better):

Format Information Speed Size 3D Printing Other CAD software
STEP 5 2 1 3 5
glTF 4† 5 5 5 3†
OBJ 3 3 2 4 3
PLY (binary) 2 4 3 3 3
PLY (text) 2 3 2 3 3
STL (binary) 1 4 3 3 3
STL (text) 1 3 2 3 3

†It's unlikely other software will be using our extension yet, so this assumes only the mesh portion will be used.

jessfraz commented 1 month ago

It would be great to have a longer form FAQ on why these are scored this way as a part of the docs, @alteous perhaps you and @jgomez720 can work together on this