STL with a strange (by my thoughts) Axis

[will george]

I have a STL from on the net. I believe I saved the link but I cannot find where I put the info. Maybe on my laptop?

Anyway, the object is a funny little draggon that I am sure my grandbabbies would love to have.

As I have no artistic skills I cannot wing it on my own to make a similar object based on what I have.

Now the real question:

Is there a way to change the orientation (XYZ) and save it to a new STL? I'm lost. I looked around the net but found nothing that made sense to be on the subject. I tried the CW STL and saved with the object showing a different Axis but it alway loads back to original. Same with MeshLab and Blender.

Yes, you are correct.. I have no idea what I am doing. I'm a woodworker.. Not an artist.

[hogiewan]

don't worry about the angle of the model; you can change the angle of the slices

[Chief]

I googled "stl importer" and got several hits. Do you have to use the one from CW or use any generic importer? On the first page of hits, they seem to have been written for AutoCAD.

$300 is a lot of money that I'd rather spend in tools or wood so I'm looking for an alternative for CW's importer.

Chief

[liquidguitars]

Do you have to use the one from CW

Yes, you need a software key from LHR to import a STL file..

[hogiewan]

lots of programs can read STL files, but the CW software reads it and converts it to patterns.

[smarder]

I thought similar things once. I thought I could engineer patterns using other methods, other software, etc., but, once I got CW's STL importer, it all became crystal clear. The software made by CW considers bit angles, thickness parameters of the machine, and so on. I didn't want to pay the money, and I tried all kinds of crazy stuff, but conclusion at this point is that it's well worth it, especially if you're doing this stuff for a living. Software pays for itself usually within one good project. This stuff may not be the most glamorous software in the world, but it makes the machine do what you want. Just pay attention to the orientation arrows :D