InStep - Help

Screen Image

This option allows a screen shot of the currently visible geometry to be saved to PNG, JPEG, Bitmap/BMP or GIF format.

Configurations

This opens up the application's configuration menu.

Background

The background is a blue to light-blue gradient by default. The colors can be changed or flipped using this setting.

Display Mode

The application is based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and as such there is no direct way to display edges of facets. In order to visualize where the boundaries of the facets lie, this option allows toggling from a Solid View (no edges visualized) to a Solid with Edges (showing both solid facets and edge lines) to a Wireframe view mode. The solid (default) mode is generally the most efficient.
Also, since the edges are not directly supported, the display relies on using textures to show the edges. Depending on the size of the geometry, the edge display may not yield an acceptable resolution. Likewise, by zooming in on a specific section, the edge size will grow or shrink accordingly.

The edge view is only as a reference for where the triangles/facets lie. Upon combining facets together, the edges will still show up even though they are no longer part of the geometry.

Triad

The triad is the small indicator in the bottom left corner that points out the direction that the view is in. The colors indicate the X-Y-Z according to a Red-Green-Blue order (RGB). Pressing this button will toggle the triad on/off.

Check Geometry

The conversion of facetted geometry to solid geometry (i.e. STL to STEP) requires that the underlying data is correct and does not contain overlaps, intersections, open edges or other issues whereby the set of surfaces does not exactly define an enclosed volume. Some applications generate solid data by default and the conversion usually does not generate any faults. In other cases, the data that is being loaded contains issues that are not easily accounted for (either automatically or manually). During the import process, the application will first check for basic issues (such as edges not being fully attached to two facets) and then perform a full intersecting check whereby each facet is checked that it does not intersect with another facet (pierced facet check). If no issues are found, the Status Window displays a 'no issues found' at the end, otherwise the error wizard starts up and indicates where the issue is approximately located and what kind of issue has been found.

GDML

GDML support has been added to support scientific endeavours. The GDML conversion is a free option that allows data to be read in from and written to a GDML file format.
This button launches an additional editor where data can be defined that is exclusively used by the GDML format. Despite the GDML data fields being a free add-on, normal license restrictions apply (number of facets, number of bodies).

Views

The basic view orientation can be changed quickly by selecting one of these items. The underlying data is not affected by changing the orientation of the display.