Import other custom 3D models

Importing models larger than 100K triangles requires a Plus, Pro or Enterprise license. You can learn more about our paid licenses on our website and can start a free trial from Arkio to try this.

We currently support loading the following files to Arkio. 

• OBJ / GLB / GLTF
• Revit, Rhino, Sketchup (Windows installer plugin)
• Unity (Unity asset store)
• BIM360 / ACC (Autodesk app store)
• JPG / PNG

OBJ, GLB and GLTF models can be loaded directly in Arkio by placing the models in the local import folder or uploading the files to the Arkio cloud. If you are using other modeling tools there are different ways to load these models to Arkio

Load the model in other supported tools first

If your original CAD/BIM tool is supported by Revit, Rhino and SketchUp and you have access to these tools, this will often be the fastest and easiest way to get your models to Arkio. Our plugins will optimize the geometry and export all the textures and objects in the correct scale making it easier to work with these models on all your devices. You can often import various CAD models to these tools (Rhino supports most CAD formats) and then load your files to Arkio using our Windows plugins

Using native exporters

You can often directly export your 3D models to GLB/glTF or OBJ from the original application. Programs like Archicad and Vectorworks can export to OBJ which is a widely accepted 3D format that can be directly imported to Arkio via our cloud or locally The GLB/glTF format is modern and simpler to work with so we recommend exporting to those formats if your software supports this. The OBJ format has several limitations, you can learn more about this at the bottom of this page.

Using third-party exporters

If your CAD application does not support exporting to our supported mesh formats you can often find third-party plugins that allow you to export GLB/glTF files directly from your app. (examples of this are this  Plugin for Solidworks or this Plugin for Navisworks)

For exports from tools that support complex coordinates, you want to make sure the models are exported close to the origin (translate model to 0,0,0) and are flipped with the Y axis up (flip YZ-axis for the Navisworks plugin)

You can also use free tools like Blender to convert models from various file formats (like FBX, USD, DAE, STL) to Arkio's compatible formats (GLB/glTF or OBJ)

Point cloud files

Point clouds can not be imported to Arkio as these datasets are often too large for many devices. If you simplify your point cloud to a mesh you can import these models to Arkio as OBJ or GLB/glTF files. Autodesk Recap 2022 introduced a scan-to-mesh workflow that can achieve this. You can also use external tools like Pointfuse which can import a wide variety of point cloud formats and export meshes.

Scale and orientation of the models

Arkio can import models in inches, feet, mm, cm, and meters from the import panel. If your modeling tool can export models to OBJ and GLB you can often select the export drawing units. We recommend exporting your creations in meters as the default 3D unit that is globally used by most 3D tools. If your model is exported in other units you can manually scale your imported files by proportional scaling the imported file after placement by editing the corner in 0.1-10x scale increments.

Many 3D modeling programs choose different coordinate systems it is often easiest to correct your orientation for the desired program from the source software. Arkio uses the left-handed Y-axis up a coordinate system similar to Unity and Cinema 4D. If you are using Blender or other modeling tools you can set the coordinate system on export time to export your models in this orientation.

If models come in on the wrong orientation in Arkio due to your original software coordinate system you can easily correct the rotation in Arkio by picking up the geometry with your hand, rotating it correctly, and then pinning it to prevent accidental movements.

When you load your models using our Sketchup/Rhino/Revit/Unity plugins we scale and orient the models correctly and gather all the assigned materials and textures so you don't need to worry about any of these settings.

Custom OBJ and GLB models

OBJ (Wavefront) file is an old 3D format that only stores geometry data, the materials data is stored in a companion MTL and also the textures are not stored in this file but are referenced with file paths.

So for OBJ models with all their materials and textures to load correctly, you need to have your .obj, .mtl, and all your texture files together in one relative path. Before you can load them to another app There is another issue with OBJ - filenames must not contain any spaces. This is simply not supported by the format, and if your mtl and/or texture files have some, the materials won't get loaded.

To see if your 3D file and texture paths are correct you can best open the OBJ file on the Windows 3D viewer. The Windows 3D viewer supports both OBJ and GLB formats and can be used for this.

There are some tricks that you can follow with Blender to prepare your OBJ files with textures but we'd recommend first trying to export your geometry in the more modern format GLB as this format contains the materials and textures so is less sensitive to loading errors.

There is more information to be found online on modeling software to export your OBJ including the textures in relative paths to OBJ. In Blender you can use the materials Path Mode 'Copy' option to copy all needed textures in a subdirectory next to exported .obj

Once exported you can open the MTL file in Notepad to check if the texture paths are pointing to the correct texture paths. The map_Kd parameter should point to a relative path (eg folder\texture.jpg) and not an absolute path that can only be accessed on your original system (eg. C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk)

After testing the textures load correctly in Windows 3D viewer and before you custom exported files to Arkio you can best ZIP the OBJ and GLB/glTF files to keep all the materials and other files together for easy uploads and sharing. A GLB file can contain all the geometry and textures inside but can also have some external texture files. glTF files can 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 all the files that belong together for one model. You can read more about this on the Cloud support page