Not Enough Time

My daughter plays soccer, it is one constant that she's stayed focused on since she was old enough to play. Jack, her coach, shared a bit of wisdom with the parents the other night during a team meeting. Now this is biased toward our daughters of course but I see some parallels that work for me too.

168 hours in a week
84 hours for sleep (12 a night, hah usually more like 6 maybe 8)
35 hours in school (for me it's work and probably a bit more than 40)
10 hours of homework (I don't have homework do I?)
7 hours for practice (drums?, or commuting in LA traffic)
5 hours "me time" (never enough me time)

Leaves 27 hours of available time for practice, extra effort

I guess that excuse, "I just don't have time to learn the Revit API" is a lie I keep telling myself?

3D Printing and Revit STL Files

I recently got an email from a fellow Revit user asking if Revit 2014 changed anything for creating STL files, specifically if we could define inches as the base unit. I haven't had the opportunity to print anything to a 3D printer via a vendor myself yet so I'm clueless.

He shared with me his current frustration which apparently has to do with a fairly automated process that his vendors offer. Apparently it is as simple as: Submit your STL file online and get your automated quote in return. It works great as long as the submitted STL file uses the correct units, which is apparently "inches". If you don't cooperate with the system you end up having to call each vendor and it takes a lot more time than necessary.

He was specifically writing about the STL Exporter for Revit from Autodesk Labs. It exports to the units "Feet" and there is no way to alter that presumption. I've asked about it with a couple friends at Autodesk and it is on their radar so hopefully they can provide an option, in the future, for defining the units of the file output.

Since I have no wisdom to offer him and I know that at least a few readers have experience with this process I'm curious what alternatives he could consider. Can some other application that can edit STL files let him change the units? Perhaps the vendors could make this easier for customers and provide a pricing routine that asks for STL units? Is it more complicated than it seems? Comments are welcome!