Posted: 4/23/2026 3:04:09 PM EDT
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I have a Tinkercad-designed STL file. It's "flattened" or otherwise all one piece. I thought it would be fun to print it in metal, but there's things that need to be changed (wall thickness, adding radii, cleaning up holes, etc.) Also, my usual print place needs STEP files. So I opened it in Fusion, but it's one solid chunk, non-editable. Exported as STEP, didn't work. Will the file have to be 100% recreated in Solidworks, Fusion, etc., or is there some tracing / conversion program or method I'm not aware of? Sigh. I'd just pay someone on Fivver to recreate it if I knew it would work. |
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Fusion can convert STL to step but it will retain all the triangulated faces that the original STL has. It is not pretty and can still be a challenge to make the modifications that you need. The conversion might be locked out of the free version too, I'm not sure about that. I normally reconstruct a solid using the mesh as a guide similar to what you'd do with a 3D scan. |
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Originally Posted By -Obsessed-: How complex is it? I reverse engineer stuff from time to time, mainly for repair or remixing something at the house. I find it is almost always faster to model it from scratch. But individual parts, I have gotten pretty good at modeling. My problem now is I have the standard Fusion plan and can't use my 4th axis with Fusion. I have Solidworks at work but am clueless on using it so I downloaded Freecad and Deskproto but those are not cutting it. |
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Originally Posted By nikdfish: If you have a link to the Tinkercad source, it can be imported into fusion and edited Are you saying it exports differently (more editable) when -- instead of using the "save" or "export" -- instead, you use the "Send To" menu, where it says "Take your designs further with Autodesk" and open it in Fusion? 
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Nvm, just tried it. You can do it a round-about way by converting to .obj then loading to CAD but it's not as simple as I speculated. |
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Originally Posted By kel: Are you saying it exports differently (more editable) when -- instead of using the "save" or "export" -- instead, you use the "Send To" menu, where it says "Take your designs further with Autodesk" and open it in Fusion? https://i.imgur.com/0HSbRHd.jpeg Yes |
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Originally Posted By nikdfish: Yes Interesting - thanks. I did look into this, but Autodesk's video says only primary shapes will transfer over, not "complex" or special shapes (threads, primary shapes that have had holes cut in them, etc.). I'll try it again on an updated software version though to see. |