3d model conversion in .stl

[Abbe]

hi, I press that they are "ignorant in the matter" and I'm not sure that this is the correct forum; I try the same.
I wanted your help to solve this problem:
I have to build a model of car in scale 1/12 using for the body shop a system of stereolitography. I basically need a .stl file of the object in scale. on some 3d modeling sites I found the 3d model of the car in 3ds format. what I need to know is if you can switch from 3ds format to something manageable with autocad or rhino to be able to integrate it and then download it in the final format. also how the size works in 3ds, can you scale the model?
Thank you.
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[MarcoBi]

If you have a model 3ds you can import it in autocad directly.
then if you have a recent version of autocad you can export .stl

 

[Abbe]

I have autocad 2008. but according to you the 3ds file should be modified or it is only a conversion pass. Do you know if you can scale it by changing the size?

 

[MarcoBi]

once imported in autocad the stairs as you want.

 

[Legs]

If you have a model 3ds you can import it in autocad directly.
then if you have a recent version of autocad you can export .stl

Just a little observation.
the stl format can be binary or ascii (textual).
autocad saves only and exclusively in the stl binary format (at least I do not know how to save it in ascii).
in case your stereolitography system requires the ascii format you can still convert from binary to ascii using this program:
meshlabhttp://meshlab.sourceforge.net/and in any case even if it was not necessary the passage in meshlab can turn out to be a cranky to "add" somewhat capricious models.

I normally use it to convert both binary stl models generated by autocad and collade models generated by sketchup in stl ascii format.
However, in my case, these steps serve to import the correct geometries into a calculation program.

 

[Kaji]

I tried to convert a 3ds to stl with meshlab and then import it into cocreate, but it does not tell me "it was not possible to load the file c:/documents and settings/administrator/desktop/dump/dump/dump_l.stl with the following methods: files, data instances 3d, mi universal. "
I thank anyone who is so kind, if it does not cost too much trouble, to convert it to step or sat, or see if the file has internal problems.
in the annex there are both the orginal .3ds and the .stl convert