How big of an STL file can Bobcad handle (v26) ??

How big of an STL file can Bobcad handle (v26) ??

I plan on imported STL files out of Zbrush. How many polygons (STL) can bobcad/cam handle?
1 million? 2 Mil? less?

I think the most I've been able to do is about 10 million faces in Bobcad. I have a file somewhere that is the largest I've been able to do, but it would take some time to find it. Takes forever to open big STLs in Bobcad and sometimes crashes requiring that you start over, but if you are patient it can be done. Depending on what you are trying to do, I would recommend other software for meshes specifically. I use Bobcad for most of my work, but I use Meshcam for large STLs. Meshcam is like a purpose built tool for large STLs. It will run on 100% of your system resources for most, if not all, of it's processes which helps it handle these massive STLs better (I've had it peg 100% of 8 cores for up to 8 hours continuously while the same task in Bobcad takes up to 24 hours). Bobcad will utilize those resources only for portions of certain tasks, while the rest of the time the it will only run on 1 or 2 cores which makes these massive computing tasks take much longer. Working on huge STLs is a lot like rendering; the more computing resources thrown at it, the faster it gets done.

Bobcad can do it in most cases, so if you are just needing it once in a blue moon, I'd just put up with the occasional problem and know going into it that chances are you may have to do it several times and loose your work a few times along the way before you'll likely end up with a successful result. As long as you know that going in and can be patient, you'll eventually get it done. If you are going to do STLs frequently like that, and can't handle the way that Bobcad is going to almost certainly crash a few times along the way, consider looking at Meshcam for this specific purpose. To be fair, I haven't found another application other than Meshcam that handles large STLs in CAM any better than Bobcad does, so Bobcad is not any worse than most in that respect. In fact, it's probably better than many due to the way that Bobart also works with meshes and Bobcad has been designed pretty well to an extent for working with meshes. It just happens that Meshcam is head and shoulders better than everything else at dealing with massive meshes. I've thrown meshes that are well into the gigabytes large at Meshcam and it keeps handling them.

Also, hardware (computer) that can handle these calcs is an absolute requirement. I burned up a CPU from doing these massive calcs after about 6 months, so when I rebuilt my computer I added a pretty big water cooling system and have not had problems since. While I'm not over-clocking my system, running a toolpath calc for 8 hours straight produces a lot of processor heat if you are at 100% of your system capabilities. Bobcad won't do that so much unless you have a 2 core or single core processor, so may be a little easier on your processor. A 64 bit version of Bobcad and operating system is absolutely necessary. If you are on a 32 bit system, I don't think it will be possible to run a large STL like that. For 1 million faces, you probably need at least 8 gigs of ram, but 16 would be better. Larger than maybe 4 million and you need to have 16 gigs with 32 being better.

thanks for the info...10 million is alot .... I can crunch down the polys pretty good in zbrush and still retain overall details...i could see a max of 4mil for me.

Will have to check my computer specs...i bought a repurposed machine just to run my machine and plotter. Its not a monster though....

... a toolpath calc for 8 hours!
better hope you know your settings before you click that button...

What resources you have on your computer??? I run Bobcad on my Toshiba Notebook and it has 32 G of RAM, Intel I7 quad core and 4G Nvidia GT Force video card. I do some crazy stuff for the customers that I am helping with Bobcad ( I used to their official trainer) and have no issues open large files..


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