#Import and export

#What can be read

• STEP — exact geometry with faces and edges. The best way to get someone else's part: you can work with it as with your own, except for the history — it is not in the file.
• STL — a triangle mesh only. There is no shape as such in it, so precise operations are impossible; it is good for overall size and for printing.
• DXF and SVG — flat outlines, they land in a sketch.

#What can be written

• Export to STEP — exact geometry. This is what goes to a customer and to a machine.
• Export to STL — triangles, for printing. Here the document's geometry accuracy matters: it decides how finely the surface is divided. It travels with the file, so the same project gives the same STL to two different people.

#Things to remember

• Only visible, not consumed bodies are exported: intermediate states of a chain are not.
• An imported body lives in the timeline as its own feature: you can move, cut and drill it, but you cannot “go back to its sketch” — there never was one.
• To simplify an import there is the Remove face command: it takes away a hole or a pad that should not be in someone else's model.