Is there anyway to make windows (7) display an icon preview of an STL file like it does pictures? Starting to get to be a pain to dig through all these files by file name.
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Is there anyway to make windows (7) display an icon preview of an STL file like it does pictures? Starting to get to be a pain to dig through all these files by file name.
No.
(rhubarbrhubarb)
Rhubarb?
Oh.. nevermind.....
lol needed some extra letters :-)
But anyone who's tried to get windows to display thumbnails of pdf files will tell you it's not exactly user friendly.
It's possible there's a customised explorer program that 'might' display an .stl file.
Like you can get 32bit explorer for 64 bit windows to get all the useful right mouse context menu items back.
But .stl files are pretty obscure, so I'd be surprised if there's anything out ther.
http://www.simulistic.com/sap.html
SAP Visual Enterprise Author
It's the old Deep Exploration from Right Hemisphere. I don't know new rebrand(SAP), but the old software was fantastic software for 3d/2d viewer and export. It's not a plugin.
I will avoid anything branded or associated with SAP like the plague.
And it is nothing like what I asked about.
Let's put it this way. You can't get windows exploere with or without plugins to display autocad drawing files. And these are ubiquitous and been around for a long time.
Just how much more obscure are .stl files ?
Whats your beef with SAP?Quote:
Originally Posted by Marm
Lets put it a better way...Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
Any file type that does not have a quick and easy method of displaying a thumbnail would be a BAD idea to try to do as icons/thumbnails. Many files contain thumbnail images embedded (Corel Draw, Illustrator, etc). These thumbnails are rendered by the host app and stored within the file. Windows can read those and display them.
DWG, OBJ, STL all contain no such thumbnail in their file format specifications. A windows plugin app would have to load the file and render it as an image. This would be HUGE overhead for explorer and extremely labor intensive to do. Compound that by the fact explorer doesn't care where its exploring. IE, if you are exploring a network share, its got to drag that file across the network before it can render it. More overhead.
Not saying it can't be done. I am just saying maybe it shouldn't be done.
Trust me, I completely understand your desire. I want it too. But I don't to bring my computer to its knees if I open a folder of 500 STLs.
Hmm, then a utility that could read an stl file and render a small jpg thumbnail of it would do the job. Not exactly a viewer but it would enable a folder full of stl files viewable as thumbnails.
But don't look at me I don't do that level of programming :-)
That is correct. But its not quite what the OP was asking for. He was asking for a thumnail view in explorer, which I really don't think he will get. Well, not efficiently anyway.
When you figure how large some .stl files can be, unless whatever program creates and stores a thumbnail someplace, it would drag explorer's response time way down. Also, the first time it hits a folder with a couple hundred .stl files, you better be ready to go get a cup of coffee (or maybe dinner) while you wait...
Yeah, I figured as much.
And SAP has made work a living hell for the past 2 years ever since the parent company in Italy made us Switch over. I'd much rather switch over to 100% metric (which I'm actually for) than SAP. Maybe it was them skimping on programmers for implementing it correctly, or just poor execution, or SAP is as bad as every outside source has ever told me, but I'm not a fan, and I don't even use it that much.
I know it's not really your question, but : why store STLs ?
I don't store STLs, I store the CATPART (or whatever your design file type is in your software) which has the build steps, parameters and dimensions stored and modifiable. Then if I need the STL again I just regenerate it : 4 minutes.
CATPART files do have a small preview image and on top of that they are minimum 15 times smaller than the STLs. All better in my opinion.
A lot of us obtain STLs from outside sources. Not everything we print is something we designed.
Wolfie is partially right. My converter is Sketchup, so that takes a moment to boot up and then convert, I'd prefer to just dump the STL straight into my slicer and go from there. I have even saved sliced files if the slicer took a long time to slice, that way I can load and print if I want.