topic Re: Help reducing triangles in Meshmixer Forum

Help reducing triangles

SGoldthwaite — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:02:48 GMT

I have an STL that I want to bring into Fusion 360, but it has almost 1.4 million triangles so it bogs Fusion down. I want to reduce the number of triangles while still keeping the shape. I attached a picture of the STL. It's a lot of wavy curves. I want to keep the crests and valleys pretty sharp. I have Meshmixer, but don't really know how to use it. I'd appreciate some tips on reducing the triangle count for this particular shape.

Re: Help reducing triangles

hfcandrew — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:37:16 GMT

In Meshmixer use Reduce: https://help.autodesk.com/view/MSHMXR/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-54087649-E962-409E-8565-F646BDA80B33

So it doesn't decimate import geometry generate facegroups first:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MSHMXR/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-5E91C94A-1D1B-46D4-BF09-776BE74F12A3

Re: Help reducing triangles

SGoldthwaite — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 18:30:17 GMT

Thanks. I used the reduce feature with Max Deviation option and set it to 0.01mm. I also enabled shape preserving. This reduced the triangles from 1.4 million to 14,000. The STL looks very good and is much more manageable in Fusion.