Simplicity. For example, the CuraEngine does a lot of polygon clipping/offseting. As far as I know polygon clipping with curves is not a fully solved issue like it is with straight lines. (for which I use Clipper btw: http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php )
I have, somewhere on my wish list, "Loading STEP files into Cura". But don't expect curves or arcs anytime soon in the GCode from me. But if I have curves before making the layer slices I can put a nice resolution to the arcs that is suited for your printer, instead of having a huge STL file.
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gr5 2,224
I'm not saying step files aren't better - they probably are. But...
stl files also are scaleable (don't use pixels or voxels). If you have too many faces in your stl you can reduce using meshlab. Here's a tutorial:
http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/226-polygon-count-reduction-with-meshlab.html
G02,G03 would be great for adding to Marlin but... most of the curves in a design are either splines or are not necessarily the same radius in 3 dimensions. So they might not get a radii in step files either.
But if you are modeling a vertical cylinder it would be nice (horizontal cylinders won't get any advantage from G02,G03).
- George
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