AnyFormat

00 PLY → STL

PLY to STL

Reads ASCII and binary PLY. Says when it is a point cloud.

01PLY in
02STL out
03Options 3

glTF works in metres and the printing formats in millimetres. Leave this on unless your model comes out a thousand times the wrong size.

Multiplied on top of any unit conversion. Use 25.4 to turn inches into millimetres.

  • No upload The conversion runs in this tab. Your file never travels — not to us, and not to the advertising.
  • No sign-up, no email, no daily cap There is no account system to sign up to.
  • No size limit we invented Only your device's memory — about ~2 GB on a desktop browser, ~400 MB on a phone.
  • Turn your Wi-Fi off and convert anyway The conversion needs nothing but this page. Ads will not load without a connection; your file will still convert. That is the whole claim, and it takes five seconds to check.

Converts PLY to STL, which is the usual last step before printing a scan. PLY is what the scanning software produced; STL is what the slicer wants.

Point clouds cannot be printed

A PLY may contain vertices with no faces at all — a point cloud, which is what a scanner or photogrammetry produces before surface reconstruction. STL is made of triangles, so there is nothing to write.

When that happens you are told plainly rather than being handed an empty file. The fix is reconstruction: Poisson surface reconstruction in MeshLab or CloudCompare turns the cloud into a mesh, and that mesh converts here.

Colour is lost, and that is often the point of the scan

Photogrammetry output usually carries per-vertex colour — it is half of what makes the scan look like the object. STL has no colour whatsoever, so the print will be whatever your filament is.

If colour matters, convert to 3MF or glTF instead. For full-colour printing, 3MF is the format the printers accept.

Scanned meshes are rarely watertight

Scans routinely have holes where the scanner could not see, and slicers need a closed manifold. The conversion is faithful; it cannot invent surfaces that were never captured. Repair the mesh first in MeshLab, Meshmixer or Blender, or rely on your slicer's repair step for small holes.

Units, and the thousand-fold mistake

Neither STL nor OBJ records a unit. A file containing the number 10 might mean 10 mm, 10 cm or 10 inches, and nothing in the file says which. Slicers assume millimetres, CAD packages usually assume whatever the document was set to, and glTF viewers assume metres.

That last one is the trap. glTF's convention is metres; the printing formats are millimetres. Convert between them without scaling and your model arrives either a thousand times too small or a thousand times too large. Automatic unit conversion handles it, and the note tells you what was applied so you can switch it off when the source was already in the other unit.

The bounding box is reported after every conversion. Checking it against what you expect takes two seconds and catches this immediately.

Other names for this

Also searched as “ply to stl for printing”, “scan to stl”.

Questions

It says my file is a point cloud.
It has vertices but no faces, which is what a scanner produces before reconstruction. Run Poisson surface reconstruction in MeshLab or CloudCompare first.
Where did the scan colours go?
STL has no colour at all. Use 3MF or glTF if you need it — 3MF is what full-colour printers accept.
My slicer complains the mesh is not watertight.
Scans usually have holes where the scanner could not see. Repair the mesh before converting, or use the slicer’s repair option.
Is my model uploaded?
No. The parsing and rewriting happen in this tab. Models are frequently confidential — an unreleased product, a client’s part, a scan of something proprietary — and none of it is transmitted. Turn your Wi-Fi off and the tool keeps working.
How large a model can I convert?
There is no imposed limit; the ceiling is your device’s memory. A desktop browser handles files of roughly 2 GB and a phone about 400 MB. A 200 MB STL — around four million triangles — converts in a few seconds on a laptop.