COLLADA Files Viewer
I've been working on a program called meshtool. You can load and view a collada file like this:
meshtool --load_collada file.dae --viewer
The pycollada library has gotten pretty good. Almost all collada files I've come across in the wild are supported properly.
Admittedly, the meshtool program is in its infancy, so I haven't written good installation instructions yet. You will need to have python 2.5+, numpy, panda3d, PIL, and lxml installed. If you let me know your platform, I can give some more detailed instructions.
Well it turns out SketchUp is slow because it validates the COLLADA file when importing. You can turn it off:
- Select File | Import... menu.
- Click on the Options button in the Open dialog.
- Uncheck Validate COLLADA file checkbox.
Maybe a suggestion to SketchUp developers: either make this option more visible or turn it off by default.
There is also MeshLab which is free and open-source, cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), it supports several formats (COLLADA, VRML 2.0, 3DS etc.) and has extensive viewing capabilities (e.g. panning/orbiting).
