I've collected quite a number of STL files for 3D printing, and realized I need some better way to catalogue them, because the default Windows explorer is starting to become burdensome. I'm looking for something that:
Shows a 3D preview I can rotate around to see the model
Allows me to sort into folders
Allows tagging with keywords for later searching
Snappy search
Maybe Windows already does this and I'm just not seeing it, but I feel like my collection is at the point where I need something dedicated, similar to a photo cataloguing tool (e.g. Google Photos) or a reference manager (e.g. Zotero/Mendeley).
Any good FOSS tool that does something like this? Or a generic "better file explorer"?
Unfortunately Nextcloud is a whole can of worms and not just an application you install on your desktop. But it does to all the things you asked for so, worth mentioning I guess? Tagging, sorting, and search are just features of it's general file management though, they are not really stl specific in any way.
Quick list of supported formats from the github page
3dm Rhino
3ds Autodesk 3D Studio
3mf 3D Manufacturing Format
bim dotbim
brep/brp Boundary Representation
dae Collada
fbx Filmbox
fcstd FreeCAD Standard File Format
glb GL Transmission Format binary
gltf GL Transmission Format separate and embedded
ifc International Foundation Class no XML or compressed
iges/igs Initial Graphics Exchange Specification
obj Wavefront with mtl and textures
off Object File Format
ply Polygon File Format
step/stp Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data
stl Stereolithography Standard Tesselation/Triangle Language ASCII and Binary
wrl Virtual Reality Modeling Language superseded by X3D
"Nextcloud is a can of worms" is an understatement. I keep talking myself into and out of trying to install it. I just don't have the time at the moment to troubleshoot it when something inevitably breaks.
Yeah that's fair. I've been running it since about 2018 and never found it too difficult, but messing around with Linux is my hobby so I admit that I enjoy the problem solving aspect. It's certainly not something you set and forget.
I suggested it here mostly because this particular plugin is both actively developed and quite good in my opinion but it would only be a viable solution if you already use Nextcloud. I'm in no way suggesting OP should install it just for this.