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3D Printing Quality Settings
Hopefully some find this helpful that are struggling with quality of their 3D prints. the smoothness of your print depends initially on the quality of the the file you export to. Regarding STL files they are simply files with a bunch of triangles that approximate the surface of an object. more triangles equals smooth surfaces, less equals rougher. The resolution setting in the export dialog is what controls how smooth your STL file will be when it gets to your slicer software. It happens to be set on custom for this image. The choices are Coarse, Medium, Fine, & Custom. Setting it to each on of those changes the settings you see below called Angular deviation, Chordal tolerance, & Miniumum facet. When you have it set to Coarse Medium or Fine, you don't get to see these settings. Posting a table of what changes when your change these settings. It'd be nice if those setting weren't hidden but merely greyed out with a setting other than Custom.
I only usually set it to custom and 0.5 Angular deviation for the small parts I've printed. Very acceptable resolution.
Now some suggest using STP files. STP file are CAD data that creates smooth surfaces and can be read and used by other CAD software. Make sure your slicer can import them. Bambu Studio slicer software can use both STL & STP files. Nearly all slicer software uses STL files. When you use STP file with Bambu, it is just going to essentially create an STL file anyway to slice. You can think of it as either your exporting the STL from onshape, or your exporting the STL from within Bambu if you use STP. Bambu allows you to control the resulting surface quality via the dialog below. Angle Deflection is the same as Angular deviation in onshape, and Linear Deflection is probably the same as Chordal tolerance. These are the default settings below. Might be noteworthy that Bambu only allows max Angle Deflection of 1° and minimum of 0.01°
So which method and setting should you use? Like all things in life, it depends! the small STP file size can be great if you need to do transfers to other people for sure. But in the end I just use STL from onshape and don't use any of the fine, medium, course selections as I find they are way to blocky for my liking. Honestly surprised they default to where they do. But if you like the blocky (faceted to be technically correct) look, then you might find use in those default settings.