It is advised to choose a tolerance of 0.01 millimeters for a good export. So if you choose the right tolerance here, you can be sure that your exported STL mesh will be perfectly printable and won’t look pixelated.

This tolerance is defined as the maximum distance between the original shape and the STL mesh you are exporting. In many 3D modeling programs, you will be asked to define the maximum tolerance, precision or deviation of your STL export. What export setting should I choose to get a small, high-quality 3D file? Luckily, this is easier than you might think. The challenge for a designer is to find the perfect trade-off between having a well-detailed, non-pixelated model and a file that is small enough to be easily shared and uploaded.

In this example, the file size of the left sphere is quite big, while the right sphere has a small file size. In the image below you can see some examples from high polygon model (left) to a low polygon model (right) that might say more than a thousand words. Reducing the number of triangles will reduce the smoothness of the surfaces, but also the file size. The smaller these triangles are, the smoother and more detailed the surface of your model will be… and the bigger the size of your 3D file.

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.

Stl file size reducer online