InStep Studio Help - Overview and General Info

The InStep Studio application has moved away from a license file/key system to one where the application receives information directly from our server to unlock it.
In order to do so, it is important that the user first create an account on this website. Login, Registering and retrieving a forgotten password are all done through this page.

Additionally, different license levels are available which can be selected from the User account, including free levels (see license options for details).

In cases where the user accesses the internet via a Proxy server, the application will need to use the same proxy settings as are used for accessing the web. During log-in from the application side, a special option is available next to the 'Login' button (Define Proxy). From here, the user can enter a host address (with optional username and password) or alternatively a web address together with a port number. Settings defined here are stored for re-use by the application and can be cleared. If a Username and Passwords are provided, they are stored locally in an encrypted format.

The main InStep interface is shown below:

The application is divided into a Menu Bar, a set of Tab Pages each with Tool buttons, a 3D Viewer area as well as status section at the bottom of the form.

Menu Bar

At the top is a standard menu bar. Here the standard File, Settings, View and Help options are available.
Each item contains a number of functions that are generally self-explanatory. In the File menu, in addition to Import, Export, Clear and Exit, is also a list of previously opened files for quick retrieval. The Settings provide access to application and license settings together with an option to restore the default settings as well as to select the desired User Interface. The View menu item relates to how data is to be viewed whereas the Help menu provides links to items related to providing help and to submit an error report. If requested by support staff, a HostID file can also be generated from here for licensing and diagnostic purposes.

In general, the application will store user settings wherever this is appropriate so that the next session uses the same parameters (such as import/export units and similar). The settings intended to be modified by the user are located in the Settings → Application Settings menu. In addition to interacting through these settings, the full list of items being stored can be manually edited (though it is strongly recommended not to do so) by editing the InStep.exe.config file in the "C:\Program Files\InStep\InStepStudio3\" folder (or wherever it was installed).
Beyond the Application Settings, all input from the user is being updated as the application is being used. Different tools will generally have inputs to provide necessary settings & values and those will be applied as they are entered (once basic validation has been done).

Under Settings → Interface three different options are available: Simple, Guided and Expert together with their keyboard shortcuts:

Each of the interfaces are briefly explained below and a link to their main help page is provided:

Simple Interface

The Simple interface is intended for users that have less experience dealing with some of the details involved in the process or just choose to use basic tools for the conversion. The interface consists of five buttons and should be progressed through from left to right with Modify/Fix and Feature conversion tools being optional.

Guided Interface

The Guided interface provides some additional options during the process but generally provides a more 'Wizard' like interface in that each step is briefly explained withe applicable options provided.

Expert

The Expert interface is the main and full interface that provides all available options for use. The topics in the Side-bar provide direct links to the different tools available. In general, the interface items are available on different tabs with a left-to-right process being recommended.

Under the assumption that the Main (Expert) interface is being used (the others have a similar but far more abbreviated set of steps), the general workflow that should be adopted is one where the tools are processed in a left-to-right fashion for both the Tab Pages as well as individual tool buttons. It is rare that more than a handful of tools/options are needed, so an understanding of what each tool does and when it is appropriate to use it is important. The Import and Export tabs are the start and end points with the items in between being optional depending on the data being worked with.

Once a file has been imported and any scale applied (see the Resize option) it may be necessary to manually edit the data. This can be done before or after performing any automatic repairs from the Repair tab page. During the Editing a process of change-accept-continue is generally being used as update of data is only performed once the 'Accept' button is pressed with changes in between being done to temporary memory only.
It is recommended that basic Editing be done either to correct known issues or once the Issue button on the Repair page has been used to detect them. At that point automatic repairs may be used or, especially for complicated errors, manual options may be employed (additionally, using external applications to make corrections should never be ignored).
Whatever the approach, the application is intended to be used with fully corrected data only and shapes that do not form a coherent, water-tight body will usually not result in the appropriate end result. The exception to this is shapes that form 'Shells', otherwise correct surfaces that only represent things such as partial 3D scans of data or similar. For these items, the Bodies:Thicken tool may be used to create a second set of surfaces that are offset from the first and therefore create a thin but solid body from an otherwise non-manifold surface.

Repairing Data in Polygon files is a fairly hot topic, especially when it comes to 3D printing (aka. Additive Manufacturing). InStep provides tools to do so, but the old adage 'garbage in, garbage out' should always be kept in mind. Just because there are some tools that can perform some repair to minor issues does not mean that this is a replacement for careful consideration of the underlying issues and a perhaps more manual approach to repairing data.
The Editing tools above are generally quite capable of making changes to the data but the process can be very slow. The automatic repair options on the other hand can be a quick way of fixing issues, but they are based on assumptions about what the issue may be and how they are best addressed. The assumptions can be wrong and lead to shapes that are less useable than they were in the first place.

The Bodies tab contains a number of tools for working with imported data that can better be thought of as consisting of multiple, separate shapes. The Bodies tools are thought of as a way to modify each group of surfaces/solids through the available options. It is possible to group data from a set of discrete surfaces by performing splitting on the data and equally re-combining them into groups by using the Merge tool.
Further review of the options available for the Bodies tools is recommended.

Detection of geometric features from faceted data is a complex problem that involves search and filter operations to identify shapes within a set of otherwise unordered triangles. This reverse-engineering of the data can, in some cases, lead to a marked improvement of the data and a reduced output file (for STEP only). The options available within InStep, specifically those located on the Features tab are automatic and only require simple tolerance values to be defined. The default values generally work well but may be changed if necessary. Not all features will be detected in all cases and if the original data has a lot of noise (usually the case with 3D scan data) then the detection will likely not be successful. More information is provided on the Features page.

Some cases are somewhat specialized, one of those is where the data is essentially flat but for a few, relatively small, changes in the height compared to the rest of the data. Classic examples of this are LiDAR or Drone scans of large regions, laser or photogrametric scans of surfaces or similar. For this purpose, we have developed the N-Relief tool that can sample the surface using a uniform (which allows for a more structured algorithm) sampling grid and then combine the data into a solid block with exterior bounds applied using a simple set of equations. This is a specialized tool that has found some use and was specifically requested by clients. More information is provided on the NURBS Relief page.

In addition to all the tools that work and modify facets directly, a set of REVerse ENGineering tools are available in their own grouping. These tools are grouped into two classes, the Slicing and Surfacing tool sets.
Slicing is a useful option whereby existing data is intersected with a plane and the resultant outline made available for use in Sketches or similar (using either DXF or STEP formats).
The Surfacing tool is aimed at 'organic' shapes such as a person's face or similar. Here, a set of NURBS surfaces can be automatically or manually generated to represent the original data in a more smooth way while keeping the resultant file more compact than to use triangles directly. More information about these options can be found in their own section: Reverse Engineering

InStep Studio can export data to two types of formats: Polygon and Boundary Representation (B-Rep).
The polygon formats are essentially any that are not the STEP format.
During export of a polygon file, all faces are converted (or kept as) triangles and any conversion to Feature based information will generally be ignored. The different format options are available through the extension-filter on the Save dialog option.
For STEP files, the boundary representation is obtained from the data and individual entities are generated during export. Generally, the file should contain few features as very large files (usually above about 10,000 features) can cause issues for CAD applications. Files exceeding 1,000,000 faces have been tested, but performed poorly if at all (CAD applications generally have issues with such a high number of individual features due to the way the data is being represented). Keeping the number of features (or simply facets/faces if the data has not been converted to feature based output) small is beneficial in keeping performance of both the InStep as well as target CAD application at an optimum.

The language can be tricky when dealing with different file formats which are all involved in the world of Computer Aided Design (CAD). Some of the items frequently discussed have different meaning to different people and thus some confusion is to be expected. While we do not claim to be the authority in this matter, there are a few terms that should be defined, at least in the context of how they are used here:

Mesh (Files)

Mesh files and file formats are those that represent a shape by means of defining locations in a 3D space (using x, y and z coordinates within a cartesian coordinate system) and to then define basic geometric shapes (such as triangles, quadrilaterals/quads and higher complexity polygonal surfaces but also volumetric elements such as tetrahedral, pyramid, etc.) that use those locations, often by reference to an Identifying value/number assigned to each location. These formats share or re-use locations by only defining them once and then referencing them in their surface/volume definition. The advantage of this is that the data is more compact and, more importantly, that there is continuity across shapes: if two shapes use the same two locations then they must in some way be neighboring each other.

Facet (-ed) geometry

Here, faceted shapes are those that have a surface that is otherwise considered smooth (such as a round hole) broken up into smaller, flat shapes. This approximation is often required in order to make graphical display possible (graphics cards are good at working with triangles, not so much with circles) and makes the underlying representation easier for things such as intersections, point-line definitions and similar. The downside is that many more straight sections are needed to closely represent a curved surface.

B-Rep

Boundary Representation (aka. B-Rep) formats are different from mesh/facet formats in that they do contain definitions that can involve curves and similar, smooth surfaces. The approach is to fully define the perimeter surfaces of a body by means of a hierarchy of shapes (starting at points that are used to define edges & curves which are used to define the perimeters of surfaces). As a whole, these surfaces enclose a volume. Fundamentally, there is a direct link between simple surfaces that fully define a volume and bounding surfaces that enclose a volume: this is what InStep is built on.

STL

STL files are likely the most common format for representing facet data for use in 3D printing and similar items. There are several file formats that are just as - if not more - capable of defining the same data, but the STL (considered short for 'STereo-Lithography' or sometimes also 'Standard Triangle Library') has an entrenched position due to its long history and ease of use.
One of the major downsides to the STL format is its lack of more advanced information about the content (such as lack of color and units). Several other formats have stepped in to provide more information, one capable format is the Alias Wavefront OBJ format though it is more of a Mesh format than a facet format. It too lacks information about the units that define its values.

STEP

The STEP (extension .STP or sometimes .STEP) is defined in ISO 10303-21 with several Application Protocols further defining details of it (such as AP 214 which is what InStep uses). STEP is an older, though very capable format and (here anyway) defines a B-Rep body or bodies with limited color information. The content of the file is plain-text (ascii) and somewhat verbose (i.e. lots of information that isn't really needed). Due to its structure, it can be greatly compressed into ZIP or other compressed formats.
Most major CAD applications support STEP and that is what makes this format important to the InStep application (and why it got its name). Although the STEP format has several shortcomings, it is still a highly valuable format as no other format can be considered as well supported by the majority of CAD applications.