Comments on: Reverse Engineering STL Files with FreeCAD https://hackaday.com/2025/10/21/reverse-engineering-stl-files-with-freecad/ Fresh hacks every day Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:11:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Hussien https://hackaday.com/2025/10/21/reverse-engineering-stl-files-with-freecad/#comment-8197201 Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:11:10 +0000 https://hackaday.com/?p=868574#comment-8197201 In reply to Jelle.

Parts drafted on paper can also be perfectly recreated in CAD. Unfortunately open-source zealots, just like soviet revolutionaries like to enshittify everything in the name of GNU and RMS (who likes eating his own toenails and defending Epstein).

]]> By: Jelle https://hackaday.com/2025/10/21/reverse-engineering-stl-files-with-freecad/#comment-8197197 Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:03:39 +0000 https://hackaday.com/?p=868574#comment-8197197 One of the nice features of modern cad is that you almost automatically get a parametric part. Even if you did not intend to, you can usually go back in the parts history and adapt measurements etc.
With this route you do get a mutable object, but its measurements are still dependent on the imported object and there is no history to tweak to adjust measurements. So It barely gets above the usability of an .stl.
Almost all designed objects are made with cad nowadays: it would be nice to have an ‘importer’ that can recognize features and recreate those from basic primitives and transformations. But that would probably need a lot of AI nowadays.

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