STL files (the most common file format when it comes to 3D printing), they will be expressed as a mesh made of triangles.

After all, we do not want to reduce the file size in exchange for a lower quality print. That’s why we will explain in this tutorial how file size can be reduced while keeping the quality of your 3D print. For example, i.materialise has an upload size limit of 100 MB.Īdditionally, most of those very heavy files have a level of detail that are just way beyond what the eye can see or what any 3D printer can print. In practice, however, 3D files need to be shared or uploaded – and that’s where overly heavy 3D files can be a pain. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with a large file. In this blog post, we will take a look at how you can reduce the size of your 3D model files and what level of detail you should be aiming for in order to get a high-quality 3D print. This can be a problem when trying to upload 3D files to websites like or when trying to share them online with your colleagues and friends. Import your file into Meshmixer, click Select, and double-click your object to select it.3D files can be heavy, very heavy. You can read a tutorial by Hubs about reducing triangle count in prints here’s the basic process:

Using Autodesk Meshmixer (it’s free), I reduced the amount of triangles in the print to see if that would fix the blobbing problem. The little globs of filament you see on the surface of the print were the result of the printer processing all of these triangles, pausing just long enough at certain vertices to allow a little extra filament to ooze out and form a small blob. This meant that we now had the same amount of triangles for a part one quarter the size. The original large file had 103,970 triangles, and all these triangles remained even as the size scaled down. We took a very large file - 443.13mm x 503.32mm x 434.38mm - and scaled it down to 25% of the original. Here’s what happened in this particular instance.

Conversely, fewer triangles in a part means it will slice and print faster, but the curves will look more faceted. The more triangles in a part, the smoother the curves of the surface will be, but also the larger the file size, the longer the slicing time, and the longer the build time.

Stl file size reducer online