Meet the Free Software

Attention: This post is over 2 years old and the information may be out of date.Attention: This post is over 2 years old and the information may be out of date.

We’ve received many questions about software and file formats in the lab. All the applications we use are available free online:

As you can imagine, the variety of software on the our lab’s Windows 7 laptops means there’s a good chance we can open a file you’ve worked on at home or in another lab. Say you’re using Adobe Illustrator or Solid Works. Although we can’t open proprietary/closed software formats such as .ai or .sldasm, many programs also allow you to save in an open format, such as .svg or .stl. If in doubt, save your file in a few formats to give us the best chance of opening it.

Frequently used file formats in the lab include:

  • .svg
  • .dxf
  • .stl
  • .obj
  • .jpg
  • .gif
  • .nc

For moving files from the lab computers to the equipment computers, we have SD cards and an SD-to-USB adapter. If you would like to save your files for future use, you may want to bring your own thumb drive, or upload your files to cloud storage such as DropBox or SkyDrive. Files on the computers are wiped daily, so please don’t forget to save a backup of your project if you’d like to continue working on it.

We hope this helps you plan ahead. If this sounds like a new language, you’ll be surprised at how fast you pick it up in the Maker Lab!