Format Guide
Stanford's polygon format — per-vertex color, normals, and custom attributes for point clouds and scan data.
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| Extension | .ply |
|---|---|
| Full name | Polygon File Format / Stanford Triangle Format |
| Geometry type | Polygon mesh with custom per-vertex/per-face attributes |
| Variants | ASCII, Binary (little-endian), Binary (big-endian) |
| Open standard | Yes |
| Supports color | Yes — per-vertex RGB/RGBA |
| Supports normals | Yes — per-vertex |
| Supports arbitrary properties | Yes — self-describing header |
PLY (Polygon File Format, also known as Stanford Triangle Format) was developed at Stanford University in the 1990s for storing 3D scan data from the Digital Michelangelo Project. PLY uses a flexible, self-describing header that defines which per-vertex and per-face properties the file contains — for example: position, RGB color, normal vector, confidence, intensity. This makes PLY ideal for 3D scanner output, photogrammetry point clouds, and research datasets where geometry comes with rich per-point metadata. PLY exists in ASCII and binary (little-endian or big-endian) variants.
Lidar scanners, structured light scanners, and depth cameras (Intel RealSense, Microsoft Azure Kinect) output PLY files with per-point color and normal data.
Photogrammetry software (Agisoft Metashape, COLMAP, OpenMVS) exports point clouds and dense meshes as PLY files for further processing in MeshLab or CloudCompare.
The Stanford 3D Scanning Repository (including the famous Stanford Bunny and Dragon models) distributes datasets in PLY format, making it the de facto standard for geometry processing research.
MeshLab, CloudCompare, Blender, Open3D, PCL (Point Cloud Library), Assimp, 3D Slicer, and 3D CAD Converter.
Commonly converted to STL for 3D printing, to OBJ for rendering, or to glTF/GLB for web visualization. Mesh repair is often needed before printing PLY scan data.
PLY is great for capturing 3D scans and point clouds, but most printers, renderers and web viewers expect a different format. 3D CAD Converter reads ASCII and binary PLY (including per-vertex color) and exports clean mesh files in three steps.
Add your PLY files
Drag a single .ply scan or a whole folder into the app. Both ASCII and binary PLY are detected automatically.
Pick an output format
Choose STL for 3D printing, OBJ for rendering, or glTF/GLB for the web. Set tessellation and units if you need a specific scale.
Click Convert
The whole batch is processed locally with a progress bar and ETA. Your scan data never leaves your PC.
Prefer the command line? The same conversions run from the CLI for scripting and automation:
PLY is both an import and an export format. Use --binary for compact binary PLY output, and --units / --tessellation to control scale and mesh density.
PLY earns its place wherever geometry arrives with rich per-point data. Its self-describing header can carry per-vertex RGB color, normals, confidence and intensity, which is exactly what lidar scanners, depth cameras and photogrammetry pipelines produce. That makes PLY the natural container for raw 3D-scan output and dense point clouds — far more so than a printing format like STL, which stores triangles only.
Once a scan is cleaned up, you usually move it on to a more universal mesh format. Compare PLY with its neighbours and convert in one click: STL, OBJ, OFF.
ASCII PLY is human-readable but can be several times larger and slower to load than binary PLY. For big scans, export to binary PLY with --binary to cut file size and speed up downstream tools.
A PLY can hold a bare point cloud (vertices only, no faces) or a full mesh. Printing and most renderers need faces — if a converted file looks empty, the source PLY was likely a point cloud that needs meshing first.
STL stores no color, so per-vertex RGB in a PLY is lost when converting to STL. To keep color, convert to OBJ, glTF or 3MF instead, or keep the original .ply as your color master.
A .ply file is a PLY file — the Polygon File Format, also called the Stanford Triangle Format. It stores a 3D mesh or point cloud with a self-describing header that can list per-vertex position, RGB color, normals and more, in ASCII or binary. It is the de facto standard for 3D scans, photogrammetry and geometry-processing research.
You do not need MeshLab, CloudCompare or Blender just to reuse a PLY. 3D CAD Converter opens .ply files directly — ASCII and binary, with per-vertex color — and exports them to STL, OBJ, glTF and 12+ formats in batch. Drop a file or a folder, pick a format and click Convert.
Open the .ply in 3D CAD Converter and choose STL, or run cadconvert convert -i scan.ply -o scan.stl. STL keeps geometry only, so per-vertex color is dropped — expected for 3D printing. Use cadconvert batch -i ./in -o ./out -f stl -r to convert a whole folder of scans at once.
Yes. 3D CAD Converter offers a free 30-day trial that converts PLY to STL, OBJ, glTF and more — including binary PLY output and full batch folders — with control over units and tessellation. No credit card is required on Windows 10 or 11.