SOLVED Help loading STL files

[aliengrey10 0]

Hi< Im new to this forum and also 3d printing. I uploaded Cura 4.5 and now 4.6. Till now Ive been using the Creality slicer with my 3d printer. I am having trouble loading many of the STL files from Thingiverse I get a message " cannot open files of the type..." yet they open on the Creality slicer. Please help...AL

[gr5 2,280]

thingiverse usually downloads as a zip file.  You have to remove the STL file you want from the zip file first.  Could that be the problem?

[aliengrey10 0]

No, The files are unzipped and are STL files they load in the Creality slicer

[aliengrey10 0]

an example of a file that will not open

[DodgeDeBoulet 6]

The screenshot you included in your last post appears to be the contents of a zip archive.

 

I downloaded the individual file and it loaded into Cura 4.6 just fine:

[gr5 2,280]

When you double click on a zip file in newer versions of windows, it looks like you are opening a folder (but it's a little different - it's a zip archive).  You can then double click on files there similar to a folder and they usually open in the correct application or you can drag and drop them onto programs and they *usually* open in that application properly: the operating system automatically unzips the file into the temporary folder and then passes that filename to the application.

 

If you later go to the app (say microsoft word) and try to reopen recent files that were in a zip archive, it won't work because the unzipped file was in the temporary folder and has since been deleted.

 

A LOT of applications don't deal with this very well (opening temporary files that were unzipped by the operating system and not by the user).  I don't know why.  I guess Cura is one of these programs.  Please realize that Cura runs on 3 different operating systems with the same code.  That's difficult to do and each operating system has it's own quirks.

 

Anyway the solution is to drag the file out of the zip archive onto your desktop or into some folder and then drag *that* file to cura.

[aliengrey10 0]

Thankyou  for a nudge in the right direction. For some reason my desktop does not not save the downloaded files in a zip folder, thus the confusion, as the files look to be unzipped. I have now downloaded the same files on my laptop and "hey presto" they are zipped files. Thanks again for the assistance.

Edited May 9, 2020 by aliengrey10
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