Reading the file. MeshMedic opens binary and ASCII STL. Because STL stores every triangle with its own three corners, it first welds corners that sit at the same position, so the counts describe the real surface rather than a pile of separate triangles. The file label shows the name, the format, the number of parts, and the triangle count.
Counting the defects. The table has four columns: Defect, Before, After, and Status. Non-manifold edges are edges shared by three or more triangles. Inverted triangles face the wrong way compared with the rest of their shell. Holes are closed loops of open edges. Degenerate and duplicate triangles get a row of their own when the file has any. A clean file shows "No defects found".
The repair. Choose Repair and MeshMedic runs one pipeline: it welds coincident vertices, removes zero-area and duplicate triangles, splits non-manifold edges and vertices, clears away stray fragments too small to enclose a volume, turns every shell so it faces outward, and caps holes with new triangles that face the same way as their neighbors. The mesh as it was stays in memory, so Show before can still draw it.
Checking it in 3D. The preview draws triangles the repair flipped or added in blue, labeled Changed by repair. Drag or use the arrow keys to orbit, scroll or press plus and minus to zoom, and press Home to reset the view. Show before switches between the mesh as it was, with its inverted triangles in red, and the repaired mesh.
Writing the export. Export opens the Windows save dialog with a suggested name, such as bracket-repaired.stl. A binary STL is written as binary and an ASCII STL as ASCII. Each kept triangle carries its attribute bytes across, which some programs use for color, and normals are recomputed from the corrected winding.
Keeping a record. After the export, the note shows the source and export names, the counts before and after for every part, and the changes: triangles flipped, added, and removed, and vertices welded and split. Copy puts it on the clipboard, and Save note writes it as a .txt file.
Trying it on your own files. The Microsoft Store runs a 15-day free trial with every feature, so you can repair the STL that gave you trouble last week and compare the result in your slicer.