Import STL's into SketchUp Web?

SketchUp 3D Printing
1

Is it possible to import STL files into SketchUp Web? I get a lot of stuff for 3D printing from Thingiverse, and I often want to modify the models, but I don’t want to try and make them myself from scratch. Unfortunately, the people there don’t often post the original 3D files, or if they do, they’re usually not SKP files. I know you can get an extension for some of the other SketchUp subscriptions, but I’m wondering about SketchUp Web specifically.

Thanks!
Jason

2

You should be able to go to Import in the hamburger menu at the top left, choose My Device and then drag and drop the .stl file in.

1 Like
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Ahh, I see. Thanks!

Wow. Maybe I shouldn’t import hugely complex files, though…that slowed it down a lot.

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By their nature .stl files use triangles for all surfaces whether they need to be triangles in SketchUp or not. Importing them into SketchUp can cause a slowdown because of the bloat. In the desktop version of SketchUp there is an option to merge coplanar faces which will reduce the amount of edges and help to increase performance. There are also extensions that can take it farther. In SketchUp Web you have to manually go through the file and find the edges that aren’t needed and delete them or just live with the performance reduction caused by the excess geometry.

This triangulation is one of several reasons why I would not use an imported .stl file. I might import it to get a few measurements from but I would a new model from scratch in SketchUp to get clean, lightweight geometry.

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Yeah, I was trying to figure out what was with all the triangles. That makes sense. Dang. I should probably get a better version of SketchUp if I’m going to keep doing this.

I probably won’t, because I’m cheap– the Shop version is $200 per year, and that’s a bit more moolah than I’m willing to spend on 3D modeling.

But thanks anyway!

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Or at least get better at modeling so you don"t have to rely on downloaded .stl files.

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Heh, that would be ideal, yes. But sometimes, like for that Google Pixel phone case I was making, having an STL of the phone that I can model a case around would be helpful, since I don’t have a physical one I can measure.

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Do you have the phone that’ll go into the case? You could take measurements from it.

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Er, I actually just said that I don’t have one. Oops, guess I didn’t make that very clear, sorry. But yes, that would be the ideal way to do it!