Mesh error: dimensions too small

In what unit system is your mesh ? In the examples it is asumed to be millimeter and therefore scaled by 0.001. When yours is in meters don't use scaling factor.
Can you attach the stl file to your fist post (edit) than I'll have a look.

As you don't show us your stl file I can only guess two problems:
1st) your language settings in the program where you exported the stl file uses comma instead of dot as decimal point (a well known problem in germany ...)
or 2nd) you are still using binary format.
Open the stl-file in a texteditor, a valid ASCII stl looks like that:

solid Created by Gmsh
facet normal 0.039968 -0.999201 0
outer loop
vertex 0.5 -0.05 0
vertex 1 -0.03 0
vertex 1 -0.03 0.025
endloop
endfacet
facet normal 0.039968 -0.999201 0
outer loop
vertex 0.5 -0.05 0
vertex 1 -0.03 0.025
vertex 0.5 -0.05 0.025
endloop
endfacet
endsolid Created by Gmsh

When there is only garbage, it's still in binary firmat. Than open the file in paraview than save data as stl, choose ASCII as type and save as different name. Adjust your inputskript to the new name.

When your plaintext values are something like 1.7e-308 than your dimension is really to small, because this is end of double precission .. but I can not imagine that this is the root of the problem.

@Chris: we should consider to check if a mesh file starts with solid and otherwise flag an error

>>ERROR: Mesh error: dimensions too small - use different unit system (multi_node_mesh_parallel_I.h:535)
The error actually sais that the difference between MIN and MAX node extension in the mesh is < 1e-4
That's usually not what you want...

>>@Chris: we should consider to check if a mesh file starts with solid and otherwise flag an error
This is actually checked!

Christoph