Learn/Drafting/Import & Export
Solid Body Export
Updated v2.3.6At a glance
- STEP AP214 — exact B-Rep geometry, mm or inches. Opens in any CAD tool.
- IGES and BREP — exact geometry for legacy CAM packages and lossless B-Rep hand-offs
- STL, 3MF, OBJ, PLY — tessellated meshes for printing, scanning, and interchange
- glTF (.glb) and VRML — meshes for web viewers and rendering pipelines
- Right-click any body in the browser panel → Export
Any solid body can leave JetCad3 as a real CAD or mesh file: right-click the body in the browser panel and choose Export. A small dialog picks the format — the last-used format is remembered — and the unit selector defaults to Settings → Preferred Units on every export. The same nine formats are available project-wide from the component right-click → Export.
Exact geometry — STEP, IGES, BREP
STEP (AP214) writes the body's true B-Rep — exact cylinders, planes, and curves, not a mesh — in millimeters or inches, with the unit correctly declared in the file. This is the format to hand a machine shop, a customer, or another CAD system; it opens cleanly in Fusion 360, SolidWorks, FreeCAD, and everything else that reads STEP.
IGES covers older CAM and CAD packages that predate solid STEP support — same exact geometry, written as trimmed surfaces, in mm or inches.
BREP is a lossless native B-Rep format: a JetCad3 → JetCad3 hand-off with zero translation, and it also round-trips with other CAD tools that read BREP.
Meshes — STL, 3MF, OBJ, PLY
STL exports the tessellated mesh in Binary (compact, the default) or ASCII encoding, in mm or inches, Z-up. 3MF packs the same mesh into a compressed archive that carries its own unit metadata, so slicers import it at the correct size with no unit guessing — if your slicer accepts 3MF, prefer it over STL. OBJ is the universal interchange mesh for modeling and rendering tools, and PLY (binary or ASCII) fits scan and point-cloud workflows.
Web & viz — glTF, VRML
glTF (.glb) is the standard for web viewers, AR, and modern rendering pipelines — exported
binary, in meters per the spec, so it drops straight into web-based 3D viewers and online part
previews at the right scale. VRML (.wrl) covers legacy visualization consumers.
Sketches export separately as DXF or SVG from the same browser-panel right-click — see Sketch Import & Export. Bringing 3D files in is covered in 3D Model Import.