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So just wondering what others do when storing digital files for their 3D printer as its clear that storage space fills up rather fast with one.

Right now I'm wondering what you do choose to store locally; such as pre-supported and your own supported edits for models. Do you keep your sliced versions or just dump them once used as you can always slice up again
When you've models with multiple parts to them do you keep each part as a separate file and supported file or do you keep all the supported in one "project" and them simply open that and delete/arrange on the plate for slicing when you need to print it?

I pay monthly for a 1TB google drive, store everything on the cloud.

Doesn't fill up fast at all given the price of storage today. I have a 4TB drive (really should replace the mirror Raid that burned out) that also has my anime and porn and it's only a quarter full and I've been hoarding since november 2019.

I keep all my primter stuff in the cloud, it's close to 100GB at this point but Onedrive gives me plenty of space. Probably could prune it at some point as there are some things I've grabbed off Thingiverse and such that I'll realistically never print, and way too many redundant zipped folders, but while space isn't an issue I shall hoard away!

In terms of storage setup, I sort be general category (warhammer. DnD, busts, large scale bits, terrain ect) then within that by type/faction, or by maker in the case of Patreon/MMF stuff (which I generally then keep in the sub-folders it comes in).Within that, I generally store Chitubox projects alongside the models in them, but export the actual sliced print files to two general folders (Photon to-print, and Ender to-print) for ease of pulling them onto the USBs.

I probably should then delete the sliced files once I print them, unless it's stuff I'm likely to print again exactly the same, which is rare for everything except bases. The only thing I regularly free up is the USBs themselves, as over-filling them reportedly causes issues with some printers.

Google Drive is where most of my crap winds up stored. The USB stick gets a decent amount of cycling of the sliced files, but I do keep those in the cloud as well, so when I want to print more of whatever thing I can just copy it onto the stick and go. I definitely save the .chitubox files (and have started storing those as only single models with support work done generally, since you can just load more into the same file to "fill the build plate" before slicing).

It takes up a lot less space to store STLs, Chitubox, and sliced files than it does a bunch of molds and resin/metal casts.

I have a 1TB external drive and keep everything, original files, project files and sliced files all sorted. The external drives are really not that expensive.

Yes, I will fill up my build plate, too. If you save the project files you can quickly remove any items you do not want, which is especially great when you print a whole build plate to test a number of minis. Once it prints good with your supports and all, then you load the project file and delete any you don't want and copy more of the fellows you want to print.

Google Drive and cloud services are great for those that need to access the files from anywhere. I have never had the need to do that and with the internet outage we had for a week w/ the TX storm, I would not have been able to access my files on the cloud and would have been crazy upset (and bored!)

I moved to a 1TB external recently, but the real hack is that I don't download everything I buy, since so much of it is hosted on MMF at this point. I used to drag everything down and unzip immediately, not so much now that I don't have to / don't immediately print things.

I had started pushing stuff to my Drive, tho frankly it was a lot of processing time and I don't really need access anywhere else.

You should always leave a back up file for any destructive processes you undertake on your files.

As MDSW, original master, working master & print files should all be saved and kept separately. You will thank yourself when you want to revisit the project.

 skchsan wrote:
You should always leave a back up file for any destructive processes you undertake on your files.

As MDSW, original master, working master & print files should all be saved and kept separately. You will thank yourself when you want to revisit the project.

Especially if using Blender, poor baby sees two faces overlapping and quietly has a mental breakdown and corrupts your whole mesh.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
You should always leave a back up file for any destructive processes you undertake on your files.

As MDSW, original master, working master & print files should all be saved and kept separately. You will thank yourself when you want to revisit the project.

Especially if using Blender, poor baby sees two faces overlapping and quietly has a mental breakdown and corrupts your whole mesh.

Triangulated meshes are far easier to correct when corrupt than it is to repair a NURBS based geometries. Mesh objects typically do not trace its history of revisions, whereas NURBS geometries are mathematically defined (as opposed to strict coordinates), and each modification affects its mathematical expression at code level. Sooner than later, geometries will end up with a undefined mathematical expression which then gets 'approximated' on screen. These geometries will usually cause artifacts and certain commands will fail because the program no longer understand what the geometry is. In destructive modelling workflow, it's highly advised to leave a master copy of it with an absolute reference point so that you can always port back the original geometries to be edited when you have complex geometries. Preserving your construction lines is also highly recommended.

Interesting thread. Mine are all stored on a NAS, though as Boss Salvage mentioned, more and more of mine are on MMF anyway, so there's a backup there as well.

For offline cataloguing I've been playing around with http://stlvault.com/ for visual previews and the ability to search by tag... it is just taking forever to tag everything and rotate the previews to useful viewpoints. There have been issues with updates wiping out metadata too, so it's a bit hit and miss. Has anyone come across anything more robust that does the same sort of thing?