TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

All that is true for fabricated things using current technology.

Everything they can produce stems from an original object that was molecularly scanned and programmed into the replicator. They cant just make whatever out of nowhere, and they introduce miniscule errors and imperfections each time. Like making a photocopy.

At the risk of being long winded, there's absolutely no reason that, given a technology which literally spins most forms of matter into existence from pure energy, that you would need, or even want, to start with a scan of some physical object. If you wanted to replicate some sort of piece of artwork, sure. but even then, you're not just "making a copy" of something. Consdier the martini. if you didn't add to that, then there's a solid chance that the martini is going everywhere because you're replicating the liquids at the same time as the glass.

you would either have to add some kind of containment field to keep the liquid in place while the glass is also built up, or more simply, just replicate the glassware first (or at least the surface holding the booze).

Even then, chances are, the martini is set up to be parametric. what if they only wanted one olive? or three? what if they wanted a different kind of gin? or shaken, not stirred. Maybe they didn't want mixed over ice at all, but chilled to a very cold temperature? what if they wanted it room temperature? or slightly warmed? (okay, that's gross.)

but getting back to the 'no need to scan anything'. if you know what's in the materials making it- lets say you want a steel i-beam, of a certain size- then you could simply define the material, procedural generate an iron alloy with x% carbon and whatever other materials to produce the perfect steel.

And here's the neat thing: that steel i-beam would have fewer flaws any "traditionally" made i-beam ever would, because it's synthetic. any of the flaws would be on the molecular or probably atomic level, with a perfect diffusion of the alloyed materials, and crystal structure and everything else. You could, presumably, even, use impurities intentionally so as to create weak points so that the I-beam fails in a known and predictable manner.

You can see the design flow for creating stuff using a replicator in Voyager, that episode with Naomi and Flotter, where harry is designing a stuffie at neelix's behest. That's how it's done. Harry didn't start with a stuffy he scanned in. It was literally like vibe coding, but with design files. (this is probably why he never got promoted. he was a Vibe, uh, engineer.)

Now these errors are for the most part irrelevant in most applications, because food for example is still very edible and nutritious even if it is not absolutely 100% as good as the original, same goes for most spare ship parts and such.

Star Trek's replicators also modify the food, which may matter more than small-scale errors. They specifically create a copy of the food that is deliberately nutritionally tailored for your specific dietary needs, and to remove poisonous substances within it.

Those errors tend to be more of a problem for big complex molecules like DNA, or sophisticated things like computer chips.