when you are making your own designs for 3D printing, you may find yourself plagued by low poly .STL files. What was once a beautiful sweeping curve is changed to ugly jagged squares when you try to slice it. the above image isnt too bad but it can get much much worse to the point of your functional models becoming unusable. Luckily this is usually an easy fix.
This specific guide will apply to Inventor and Fusion 360 but it can most likely be applied to other CAD programs too. The root of the problem lies in the export quality. this is because CAD software is mathematically defined whereas .STL files are a mesh made from triangles. The export quality defines how many triangles to give to a solid. the trade off for this is file size. in my case, the file size triples for the high export quality
you can adjust the quality depending on what you want between object quality and file size. in my case i have an old 1TB HDD dedicated to my CAD work so file size is no issue, i prefer high quality. the results are undeniable.
first step is to open your .STL export window. from here click options
The options window will let you choose the units and quality. make sure the selected units are what is expected by your slicer.
Hopefully this should fix any scaling and quality issues experienced with exporting CAD files.