Oh, and be careful with manufacturer part names/number for KiCAD part names as those must not be unique.
Safest way is to decouple manufacturer name/ID from part name in KiCAD by either using an internal number (without a database you get lost = might work for teams/groups and has some advantages) or use distinguishable part names that work for your flow (I do that).
I wonder how much longer until someone cobbles together a tool that works as part manager…
It should be some sort of container that holds the symbol, the footprint, the 3d model (vrml + step) & the datasheet.
And it would need to be able to push/pull those parts into the KiCAD repos/libs/folders.
Any dev knows if stuff like this is being aimed for?
It might be possible to make a script to copy all the files used by KiCad to provide the rendering. From there it might be possible to create other applications which provide such a preview but it will be necessary to provide replacements for the Prj() and Pgm() variables. To support the internally defined model paths you will also need to process the kicad_common configuration file.
Of course this assumes that you want to use the plugins to render any model file which is supported by the plugins; if you only want to display STEP or IGES then it may be better to use the OCE visualization toolkit.