Overview

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Publishing and Loading Your Models

In How Speckle Works we covered the basics of how data flows in Speckle. We’ll now see these two core mechanisms more in detail. The first method is by using connectors, this is the recommended way as it allows for much greater control. Speckle also supports direct file uploads for IFC, STEP, OBJ and other formats.

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Using Connectors

Connectors are plugins that work directly inside your tools such as Revit, Blender and Grasshopper and this means you have a much higher degree of control and performance. Connectors allow you to:

• only publish a portion of your model (for example by selection or category)
• only publish/load objects that have changes since previous versions, instead of re-uploading/downloading everything
• manage projects, models, versions directly in-app
• change tracking and notifications: be notified when changes are ready to be loaded or published
• optimize geometry and data sets
• access additional import and export settings (detail level, project base point, merging coplanar faces etc)
• design custom workflows (eg in Grasshopper and Blender)
• (soon) open 3D comments directly inside your CAD/BIM tool

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When should I use direct file uploads?

In case there is no connector for your app, or you simply do not have access to a specific software, you can also upload files directly to Speckle. We are actively looking to expand the supported file types.

• Supported file upload formats: IFC, STEP, OBJ
• Coming soon: Rhino (.3dm), STL, VDA, USD, VRML/Open Inventor, SketchUp (.skp), and more

With direct file uploads the whole file needs to be uploaded every time, but once the model is in Speckle it’ll behave very similarly to how it would if published by a connector.

Every time a file is uploaded a new version of the Speckle model is created, this allows to keep the version history of each file. New versions can be uploaded by using the drop down menu on each model.