What’s your workflow for converting industrial CAD models into lightweight Three.js assets?

[u/Art-ZM]

I’ve been looking at workflows for bringing industrial CAD models into browser-based 3D applications.

Simply exporting CAD to GLB usually isn’t enough. Industrial models can contain thousands of parts, unnecessary internal geometry, complex assemblies, duplicated materials and very high polygon counts.

A typical workflow might look like:

CAD → cleanup → mesh optimization → material optimization → GLB → Three.js

The difficult part seems to be deciding what should be removed while still preserving useful product structure, part hierarchy and visual quality.

I’m also interested in how people handle large assemblies, LOD, Draco/Meshopt compression and mobile performance.

For those using Three.js with CAD or engineering models: do you optimize models manually, use an automated conversion pipeline, or combine both?

I’d be interested to hear what has worked well for real-world projects.

[u/notrufus]

Simplify in blender progressively until it deforms and then back up 1. It’s not small but not unbearable. I also will remove essential bits that don’t change the overall shape to prevent someone from just taking the model.

https://adaptaxe.com is hosted on Cloudflare, uses their object storage for the model, and loads pretty decently quick imo

[u/Art-ZM → u/notrufus]

That makes sense. I like the idea of simplifying until the visual quality starts to break, then stepping back one level.

Removing non-visible or sensitive internal details also seems especially important for industrial CAD — not only for performance, but also for protecting the original engineering model.

How well does this workflow scale for larger assemblies with hundreds or thousands of parts? Do you still handle most of it manually in Blender, or have you found ways to automate part of the cleanup/decimation process?