I’ve collected quite a number of STL files for 3D printing, and realized I need some better way to catalogue them, because the default Windows explorer is starting to become burdensome. I’m looking for something that:
- Shows a 3D preview I can rotate around to see the model
- Allows me to sort into folders
- Allows tagging with keywords for later searching
- Snappy search
Maybe Windows already does this and I’m just not seeing it, but I feel like my collection is at the point where I need something dedicated, similar to a photo cataloguing tool (e.g. Google Photos) or a reference manager (e.g. Zotero/Mendeley).
Any good FOSS tool that does something like this? Or a generic “better file explorer”?
Microsoft powertoys can show a 3d thumbnail in windows explorer
So Nextcloud has a shockingly good 3d model viewer with a long list of supported formats https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/files_3dmodelviewer . Here’s a quick demo video I made: https://vimeo.com/865805210?share=copy
Unfortunately Nextcloud is a whole can of worms and not just an application you install on your desktop. But it does to all the things you asked for so, worth mentioning I guess? Tagging, sorting, and search are just features of it’s general file management though, they are not really stl specific in any way.
Quick list of supported formats from the github page
3dm Rhino 3ds Autodesk 3D Studio 3mf 3D Manufacturing Format bim dotbim brep/brp Boundary Representation dae Collada fbx Filmbox fcstd FreeCAD Standard File Format glb GL Transmission Format binary gltf GL Transmission Format separate and embedded ifc International Foundation Class no XML or compressed iges/igs Initial Graphics Exchange Specification obj Wavefront with mtl and textures off Object File Format ply Polygon File Format step/stp Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data stl Stereolithography Standard Tesselation/Triangle Language ASCII and Binary wrl Virtual Reality Modeling Language superseded by X3D“Nextcloud is a can of worms” is an understatement. I keep talking myself into and out of trying to install it. I just don’t have the time at the moment to troubleshoot it when something inevitably breaks.
Yeah that’s fair. I’ve been running it since about 2018 and never found it too difficult, but messing around with Linux is my hobby so I admit that I enjoy the problem solving aspect. It’s certainly not something you set and forget.
I suggested it here mostly because this particular plugin is both actively developed and quite good in my opinion but it would only be a viable solution if you already use Nextcloud. I’m in no way suggesting OP should install it just for this.
It also runs like crap, even on decent hardware. I don’t get why people love it so much…
Why not try one of the free nextcloud hosting providers? I don’t remember if they have support for Nextcloud apps.
Not sure if this van_dam might work for you. I found it randomly searching through my Unraid server’s App store and it seems to be built around 3D printing files. As a note, I haven’t worked with this one personally yet since I haven’t had the time to get Postgres and Redis set up, but I have this pinned to come back to it. Could be worth a look!
