topic Re: STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Function in Fusion Support Forum

STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Function

jmontgome15 — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 00:19:49 GMT

Recently have switched to using Fusion360 for the majority of my 3D printing projects (previously used non autodesk CAD packages).

I'm an Mac based user so have been really appreciating Fusion360 running on mac without having to dual boot or VM.

In macs Finder file browser there is a great preview system where hitting space bar will open a preview of the highlighted file regardless of it being a text file/ picture / spreadsheet / or 3d model.

I /LOVE/ using this feature when sifting through folders trying to find the correct version of a print, but I've found that anything exported from Fusion360 doesn't load in OSX's Finder's Preview window.

If I reprocess the STL with a different program and then reexport it then the preview system does work again. Leading me to think there is an encoding issue when using the finder preview with fusion360 stl exports, it's not like the models from fusion360 are broken or non manifold.

I'm curious about what makes the export from Fusion360 incompatible while everything else's export works fine.

Very minor issue but one making me lean away from continuing to use Fusion360.

Posting this in support rather than feature requests because it's something I consider broken.

El Capitan 10.11.6

Fusion360 2.0.5335

Re: STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Functio

paul.clauss — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 22:39:08 GMT

Hi @jmontgome15

Thanks for posting! I didn't know about the space bar trick - nice share.

I was unable to reproduce this issue on my end with Mac OSX 10.14.2 (Mojave) - all STLs from Fusion are previewed properly, as shown below:

This worked for all files I exported from Fusion 360 in STL format.

I believe you may be experiencing this issue because Fusion no longer supports Mac OSX 10.11 as of January 2019 - this is noted on the System Requirements Page. I would recommend updating your Mac OS - please let me know if the problem persists after doing so.

Re: STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Function

gbeth1956 — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 17:38:12 GMT

little off topic but, f3d files do not show a preview on my system. just the f3d icon. MacOS 11.6. bug or feature?

love the program otherwise !!!

Re: STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Function

gbeth1956 — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 17:39:52 GMT

oh, it's a mbpro latest intel, if that helps

Re: STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Function

HughesTooling — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 17:43:27 GMT

@gbeth1956 wrote:

little off topic but, f3d files do not show a preview on my system. just the f3d icon. MacOS 11.6. bug or feature?

love the program otherwise !!!

As far as I know there's no preview for F3D files on Windows or Mac. The F3D is actually ZIP file and it does contain a thumbnail but don't think anyone's made a thumbnail viewer.

Mark

Re: STLs Generated from Fusion360 not viewable with MacOS Finder Preview Function

gbeth1956 — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 17:51:19 GMT

ahh, ok thanks for the reply!