Questions, answered properly.

No. 3D PrintVault runs a small web server on your own machine and shows you its interface in a browser window. That server binds to 127.0.0.1 — the loopback address — which means it isn't reachable from your local network, let alone the internet.

There is no account, no sign-in, no sync, no telemetry and no analytics. Disconnect from the internet entirely and 3D PrintVault behaves identically.

No. Nothing in 3D PrintVault runs on a schedule or watches folders in the background. Sweep, Repair & Regroup, and every other bulk operation happen only when you press a button, and each one shows you the complete plan first, as a checklist you can edit.

Renaming to snake_case happens as part of import, and is shown in that same preview before you apply it.

Undo it. Every file operation is written to a journal before it happens, grouped into batches, and the Activity view gives every batch a one-click Undo that returns each file to its original path. Not just the last action — any batch in the log.

It has no ability to. There is no delete operation anywhere in the file engine. Files identified as junk, duplicates or stray software are moved to a quarantine folder, batched by date. Emptying that folder is something only you can do, in Explorer, on purpose.

Mark those folders as a Creator Vault. 3D PrintVault will index, thumbnail, search and count prints from them, but its file engine physically refuses to write across that boundary in either direction — no button, setting or bulk action can override it.

If you want a controlled route between them, enable the airlock: one named subfolder that library files can be dropped into, and the only place files may travel back out of.

On your disk. Your model files stay in the folders you nominate. 3D PrintVault's own index — print counts, tags, queue, spools, journal — lives in a single SQLite database file next to your library, alongside a thumbnail cache folder. Back up those two and you've backed up everything 3D PrintVault knows.

No — that's the job 3D PrintVault is for. Point it at what you already have, however chaotic, and let it index everything in place. Sweep handles the incoming pile, Repair & Regroup proposes fixes for whatever a previous tool scattered, and the duplicate finder shows you what you're storing twice.

Seventeen model formats are indexed, searched and counted: STL, 3MF, STEP, STP, F3D, SHAPR, 3DM, OBJ, SVG, GCODE, BGCODE, PLASTICITY, SLDPRT, SLDASM, X_T, PLY and AMF.

STL, OBJ and 3MF get true rendered 3D thumbnails and open in the built-in viewer. 3MFs exported by Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer reuse their embedded plate preview. SVGs are drawn directly. The rest get a color-tinted type badge.

Companion files that live alongside models — READMEs, licenses, PDFs, images, MTL files — are kept with their project rather than treated as separate models.

3D PrintVault doesn't replace your slicer — it feeds it. Right-click any model to open it straight into Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, Plasticity, Shapr3D, Fusion 360, FreeCAD, Rhino 8, Blender, Illustrator or Inkscape. It detects which of these you actually have installed and only offers those.

Using something not on that list? The app list is a plain configuration file you can add to.

There's no cap. 3D PrintVault was built and hardened against a real library of over 5,600 models spread across many thousands of files, and that's a working size, not a limit. The first scan of a large library takes a few minutes while thumbnails render; after that the cache makes it instant.

Yes. The library location is configurable and works fine on a second internal drive or an external one. Network drives generally work but will be slower to scan and render, and the drive needs to be connected when 3D PrintVault starts.

Yes, for the library you nominate — that's the point. Models are organized into category folders with normalized names, and multi-part projects are kept together in one folder each. It's a plain folder tree you can browse in Explorer without 3D PrintVault, and every change is undoable.

Folders you mark as a Creator Vault are the exception: those are organized in place and never restructured.

Your models stay exactly where they are — a normal folder tree of normally named files that any program can open. 3D PrintVault's database and thumbnail cache are two items you can delete or keep. Nothing is locked into a proprietary container and nothing stops working.

Three things a hobby setup doesn't need. Your paid and client work sits in a Creator Vault that the file engine cannot write into or out of, so a bulk tidy-up can never mix it with free downloads. Every model carries the source and license record you enter, so you can see at a glance where a file came from before you list a print of it. And print counts are keyed to file content, so they survive renames, re-downloads and reorganization — the number you sold against stays attached to the actual file.

No, and be careful of anything that claims it does. 3D PrintVault keeps records: the source URL, the license you recorded, the date you filed it. Those records are only as good as what you put in, they are never verified against the designer's actual terms, and they are not legal advice. What they give you is the ability to answer "where did this come from?" in one click instead of one afternoon. The commercial-use decision stays yours. See Section 5 of the license.

That's exactly what a Creator Vault is for. Point it at the folder where your own work lives. It gets indexed, thumbnailed and searchable alongside everything else, but it is organized in place and never restructured, and no bulk operation can reach into it. Your originals stay where you put them, dated and attributable.

Operating system: Windows 10 & 11 (64-bit).

Browser: a current version of Chrome, Edge or Firefox. Chrome or Edge is recommended, because 3D PrintVault can then open in its own clean app window with no tabs or address bar.

Hardware: anything that runs a slicer comfortably. 3D thumbnails are rendered by your GPU through the browser. You'll want free disk space for the thumbnail cache — budget roughly a few hundred megabytes for a large library.

Not yet. Version 1.0 is Windows-only. The engine underneath is cross-platform, so it's genuinely on the roadmap rather than a polite no — but we'd rather say "not yet" than sell you something that half works. See the changelog for what's planned.

Because that's what gives you hardware-accelerated 3D previews of thousands of models without shipping a heavyweight desktop framework. The browser is the renderer, not a website — everything is served from your own machine.

On Chrome or Edge it launches in app mode, so it looks and behaves like an ordinary desktop window.

The installer may ask once, as Windows installers do. Running 3D PrintVault afterwards does not require elevated permissions — it only touches folders you've pointed it at.

It shouldn't, but a brand-new application from a small publisher occasionally triggers a reputation warning on first run. If that happens, choose to keep and run it, or let us know which product flagged it so we can submit it for review.

Check the documentation first — the troubleshooting section covers the common ones. If that doesn't sort it, email us with what you did, what you expected and what happened instead. Include your Windows version and roughly how big your library is.