About Reverse 3D Mesh Search

Reverse 3D Mesh Search

Need to find where you downloaded that mesh (STL, 3MF, or OBJ) from? Maybe you need to share a link, give credit, lookup the license, or contact the creator. Maybe you're missing a part. Maybe you just need to make sure it exists on the Internet, so you can delete it off your hard drive.

Simply load a mesh from a file to get the corresponding URL. If the mesh isn't already in the system, you can add a URL.

When adding a URL, add the shortest URL that points to the web page for that mesh, not to the creator, where possible.

Examples:

https://www.3dbenchy.com/download/

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3189377

https://www.printables.com/model/3116

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/32710

https://cults3d.com/:467406

https://pinshape.com/items/34605

https://thangs.com/3d-model/932681

https://www.patreon.com/posts/82333445

When loading your mesh for searching, only the mesh hash, file hash, and a confidence score (a number between 0 and 11 that represents the confidence that the generated hash is unique) are sent to the server.

When submitting new entries, we also collect the URL that you submit and your IP address in order to fight spammers.

IMPORTANT: We do NOT collect the mesh that you load. The mesh never leaves your web browser. Instead, we collect unique hashes.

The unique hashes are one-way hashes and cannot be reversed to reconstruct a mesh. It's just a short string of characters.

Therefore, you can add private and commercial meshes in addtion to publicly available meshes to the system. Only those who already have the mesh can generate the hash for searching. In other words, when you add your mesh to the reverse mesh search engine, you are not sharing or giving away the models to the world. You are only sharing the web address to the page that provides details about the file for those who already have the mesh.

NOTE: When loading a 3MF or OBJ file, all meshes in the file are used.

NOTE: Large (100MB+) 3MF files may fail to load in your web browser due to the ineffieciency of 3MF files. 3MF files are stored as XML text files, then compressed. A 100MB 3MF file can easily be over 500MB after uncompressing, and Javascript limits a contiguous bit of text in memory to 500MB. You can try converting your mesh to STL first, then loading it.

The QR codes dynamically redirect to the current URL for the mesh, so if you update the URL, the QR code will automatically redirect to the new URL.

Why aren't we asking for permission to use cookies? We don't need no stinking cookies.

Let the searching begin!

Reach out on Twitter for feedback: @EthansDad3D