Import other 3D CAD formats to Arkio

If you are using other 3D modeling tools than Revit, Rhino and SketchUp, and Unity you can have two ways to load your models to Arkio.

If your original CAD/BIM tool supports exporting to Revit, Rhino and SketchUp and you have access to these tools, This will be the easier way to get your models to Arkio. You can open or export your scene to formats supported by these tools (Rhino supports most import formats out of the box) and load your files to Arkio using our Free plugin

Most CAD and BIM file formats are supported by these tools so this will be the fastest and easiest way to get eg. your DWG or IFC files loaded to Arkio in the correct scale with optimizations for mobile devices.

You can also directly export your 3D models to OBJ or GLB/glTF from the original application. Programs like Archicad, and Vectorworks can export directly to OBJ file which is a widely accepted 3D format that can also be imported directly to Arkio via our cloud or locally

OBJ models come with an MTL file and separate texture files that can be in the main directory or a subfolder. All these files need to be in one location and included with the upload to Arkio to correctly load all textures to Arkio. 

The best way to see if your 3D file and texture paths are all in good health is by opening the OBJ or GLB/glTF file on your default 3D viewer. The Windows 3D viewer supports both these formats and can be used for this.

You can also open the MTL file to check it the texture paths are pointing to the correct textures (the map_Kd parameter should point to the correct texture file name and a local folder path)

Before you upload files to Arkio you can best ZIP the OBJ and GLB/glTF files to keep all the materials and other properties together for easy uploads and sharing with your devices. A GLB file can contain all the geometry and textures inside but can also have some external texture files. glTF files contain a folder for the textures and BIN file that needs to be included for the model geometry and textures to load correctly.

The easiest way to load custom 3D imported files like this is using our Arkio Cloud to upload the files to your device. You can read more about using the Cloud portal on this support page

You can find more information about the loading and placement of custom 3D import on this support page