Drop an .stl below and download it as a binary PLY — the format mesh-processing tools and research pipelines speak natively. Converted locally in your browser; your file is never uploaded.
Converted locally · never uploaded · no signup
MeshLab, CloudCompare, Open3D and most geometry-processing libraries treat PLY as a first-class citizen.
The PLY is written in binary form — smaller and faster to load than ASCII.
The mesh is converted locally with three.js. No upload, no server, no account.
Drag the .stl file into the tool, or click to browse.
The triangles are re-encoded as binary PLY in browser memory.
Open the .ply in MeshLab, CloudCompare or your Open3D / trimesh script.
STL is a dead end outside printing: it can't hold per-vertex attributes, and some analysis tools read it grudgingly or not at all. PLY is the lingua franca of mesh processing — decimation, smoothing, measurement, comparison against scans, academic pipelines. Converting STL to PLY gets a print file into that world cleanly.
Exactly what the STL had: triangle geometry with normals. STL stores no color, UVs or other attributes, so there are none to carry over — but once in PLY, processing tools can add per-vertex data (quality metrics, colors from a scan alignment, curvature) that the format supports and STL never could.
Yes — free and unlimited, no signup required.
No. Loading, converting and exporting all happen in your browser's memory.
Binary — smaller files and faster parsing. Every serious processing tool reads binary PLY.
Both work, but PLY handles per-vertex attributes (color, quality, custom scalars) natively, which is what mesh-processing and scan workflows revolve around. OBJ is better for DCC modeling tools.
Type a prompt, get a textured 3D model in about a minute — then download it as GLB, STL, OBJ, FBX or USDZ.
Generate a model from text →