coin_foreign_file_support(3)

💅 NAME 💅

coin_foreign_file_support — Foreign File Format Support 🦋

okay bestie, so this whole page is the tea on how Coin handles foreign file formats — like, files that aren't native Open Inventor vibes but that we still wanna read and play with. 🎀

---

🌸 Formats we stan so far 🌸

• STL / Stereolithography files (.stl) 💖

---

✨ how it actually works, no cap ✨

SoSTLFileKit serves as a first example of how foreign file format support can be implemented through the SoForeignFileKit interface nodekit. 🫶

For STL, the file format is so trivial that it maps directly into a few Open Inventor nodes. easy peasy, iconic behavior ✨

For other file formats, though? the direct mapping might not be possible or desirable — maybe important information will get lost in such a conversion 😭 — and the implementor might choose to implement a set of internal custom nodes for doing the rendering (and applying the other actions), and choose to first do pure Open Inventor organization when the node kit is asked to write its contents as a scene graph. it's giving ✨architecture✨ fr fr.

FIXME: Document auto loading when implemented and tested ⚠️

---

👀 See also 👀

• SoForeignFileKit
• SoSTLFileKit

---

k that's the whole page bestie, go forth and convert 💅

Version 4.0.10 🌈 — Thu Jun 25 2026 🎀 mwah, love u, bye 👑