<p>I'm a beginner in 3d printing, so please bear with me.</p>
<p>I downloaded a zip with about 100 STL files. I now want to pick one or two to print. The names of the stl files are not very helpful so I need to look at them to find the ones I want. I can open all of them one by one using Cura, or Tinkercad, but that is a very slow and long process with so many files. Ideally I would like to have an overview of all the files in little previews so that I can get an idea what they are to narrow down which files I need to open to inspect the details.</p>
<p>Is there a program with which I can do something like that? I'm on Linux, but tips about Windows/Mac software would also help since I can use it to search for Linux alternatives to that software. All tips are welcome!</p>

[{'answer_id': 19661, 'author': 'Criggie', 'author_id': 12956, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/12956', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>Cura's probably your best bet.  You can select several STL files and it will open them all, (memory allowing) then try to place them for printing.  If they can't fit on your print bed the items get placed off to the side.  Clicking on the object will show its name in the lower-left, so you can go rename the file to be more representative.</p>\n<p>Tinkercad can only import one item at a time, and tops out at 25 Mbytes.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 19662, 'author': '0scar', 'author_id': 5740, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/5740', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>If you are on Linux, and a little capable in programming or scripting, a very handy tool is <a href="https://openscad.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OpenSCAD</a>. It can even be used from the command line from a shell.</p>\n<p>You can load in STL files and offset them in a graphical view or loop through a list.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 19664, 'author': 'fred_dot_u', 'author_id': 854, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/854', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Using the search terms, &quot;linux stl viewer,&quot; a number of results appear. One of the more promising programs, for Mac, Windows and Linux appears to be <a href="https://github.com/fstl-app/fstl" rel="noreferrer">fast stl viewer</a>, aka fstl. Image from linked site. Instructions included on the linked site to make fstl the default viewer for STL files.</p>\n<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/4jJl1.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/4jJl1.png" alt="fstl screen capture" /></a></p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 19668, 'author': 'user10489', 'author_id': 28397, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/28397', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': False, 'text': '<pre><code>#!/bin/sh\n\nif [ ! -d thumb ] ; then\n  mkdir thumb\nfi\n\nfor e in stl STL ; do\n  for i in *.<span class="math-container">$e  ; do\n    j=`basename "$</span>i&quot; .<span class="math-container">$e`\n    if [ ! -f thumb/"$</span>j&quot;.png -o &quot;<span class="math-container">$i" -nt thumb/"$</span>j&quot;.png ] ; then\n      echo <span class="math-container">$j\n      echo "import(\\"$</span>i\\&quot;);&quot; &gt; x.scad\n      openscad -o thumb/&quot;$j&quot;.png --imgsize=100,100 x.scad \n    fi\n  done\ndone\nrm -f x.scad\n</code></pre>\n<p>Quick and dirty script I\'ve used to maintain a thumbnail directory.\nIt uses OpenScad to generate the default view for a part; not always the best view, but for most parts, this is sufficient.  Once you have the thumbnails, use gthumb or something to view them.</p>\n'}]
['https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/19659', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/26025/']