Turn a PLY scan into an STL for 3D printing. It is converted in your browser, so the file never leaves your device.
Drop PLY files here
or choose from your computer paste with Ctrl V
from Photos or Files
Ready · other file types work too0 bytes uploaded, ever
Drop PLY files onto the box above, or click it to choose them. ToAny reads the file's contents to detect the type, so a wrong extension does not matter.
Press Convert. There is nothing else to set. The work happens in this tab.
Save the STL, or download everything as one ZIP if you converted several files.
The PLY to STL converter is part of this page and runs inside your browser. Your 3D models are never sent to ToAny or to anyone else.
Nothing has to travel to a server and back, so the conversion starts the moment you press Convert, even on a slow connection.
No sign-up, no email address and no watermark. Add several files and download them together as a ZIP.
3D scanners and photogrammetry programs often save PLY, with a colour on every vertex. Printing needs STL, which stores shape only, so the colour is dropped. Scans are often open meshes with holes, which need repairing before they can be printed.
The model is converted as triangles: lines and points are dropped, positions are used as they are, and no axis conversion is applied, so a model that is Y-up in glTF and Z-up in STL, OBJ and PLY is written exactly as it was read. STL stores geometry only, so vertex colours and materials are dropped. Models up to 3,000,000 triangles are accepted.
PLY stores a mesh or a point cloud with arbitrary per-vertex properties, such as colour, and comes in text and binary forms. It was designed at Stanford to hold scanner output and is still how many 3D scanners and photogrammetry tools save results.
Opens in MeshLab, CloudCompare, Blender and 3D scanning software
PLY converterSTL describes a surface as a list of triangles and nothing else: no colour, no materials, no units. That simplicity made it the standard input of 3D printers and slicing software. It exists as binary and as text; the binary one is much smaller.
Opens in Every slicer and 3D printing program, CAD tools and Windows 3D Viewer
STL converter| PLYPLY polygon model | STLSTL 3D model | |
|---|---|---|
| Stands for | Polygon File Format (Stanford Triangle Format) | Stereolithography file |
| Type | 3D model | 3D model |
| Compression | None | None |
| Introduced | 1994, by Greg Turk, Stanford University | 1987, by 3D Systems |
| Opens in | MeshLab, CloudCompare, Blender and 3D scanning software | Every slicer and 3D printing program, CAD tools and Windows 3D Viewer |
| Best for | 3D scans and point clouds with colour per vertex | 3D printing |
| File extension | .ply | .stl |
No. The PLY to STL conversion runs inside your browser, on your own phone or computer. The file is not sent to ToAny or to anyone else.
No further quality is lost: STL stores the decoded audio exactly. The result is identical in content.
Yes. Add as many as you like, convert them together and download each result or all of them as one ZIP.
The steps are the same everywhere because ToAny runs in the web browser: open this page in a current version of Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, add the PLY file, press Convert and save the STL. There is nothing to install.
Yes. Models up to 150 MB and 3,000,000 triangles are accepted; a larger one is refused with a message. Beyond that the limit is your device's memory, since nothing is uploaded; a computer copes with large files better than a phone.