Windows plugin STL viewer

[Marm]

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.

[curious aardvark]

No.
(rhubarbrhubarb)

[Marm]

Rhubarb?

Oh.. nevermind.....

[curious aardvark]

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.

[Valter]

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.

[Marm]

I will avoid anything branded or associated with SAP like the plague.

And it is nothing like what I asked about.

[curious aardvark]

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 ?

[Wolfie]

I will avoid anything branded or associated with SAP like the plague.

And it is nothing like what I asked about.

Whats your beef with SAP?

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 ?

Lets put it a better way...

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.

[curious aardvark]

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 :-)

[Wolfie]

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.