Convert STEP to glTF
Convert STEP to glTF in your browser. The conversion runs on this page and the file never leaves your computer.
Result
Before you convert: what this keeps and what it destroys
Preserved
- The shape, to within the tessellation tolerance
- Overall dimensions and proportions
- Watertightness, where the input is watertight
- Colour
- Separate parts and their positions
Destroyed
- Exact curves and surfaces, replaced by triangles
- The feature tree and any parametric history
- A recorded unit: glTF stores none
↺ the reverse: glTF → STEP · about .step · about .gltf · just view it instead
Why people convert STEP to glTF
The web pipeline route, in the readable container. Take this over GLB when you want to inspect or edit the result: it is JSON, so the node tree, the mesh names and the materials are all right there to be read.
The buffer is embedded as a base64 data URI, which means one file rather than the .gltf plus .bin plus textures that most exporters produce. Nothing can go missing in an email. The cost is roughly a third in size against GLB.
A STEP assembly keeps its structure, because glTF has real nodes with transforms. Exact surfaces become triangles, and every coordinate is divided by 1000 on the way from millimetres into glTF's metres.
What you get
You get a plain-text glTF file you can open in an editor containing triangles. The reader tessellates supported surfaces or uses saved render meshes where required by the source format. Inspect curved faces at the intended output size. The triangle count depends on the model and the reader's meshing settings.
The output uses metres, as required by the glTF specification.
Carried across: supported base or vertex colour, the supported part structure.
The conversion runs in your browser. Your file stays on your computer and is not uploaded.
What to check afterwards
- STEP declares its unit in the file. Check the output dimensions in the receiving application, especially when its import settings can override the unit.
- The numbers change. glTF is read in metres and STEP in millimetres, so every coordinate is rescaled. The result is the same physical size, but the numbers in the file are different numbers.
- Curves become facets. STEP stores exact surfaces, so a hole is a cylinder with a radius. glTF stores triangles, so that cylinder becomes a many-sided prism. Look at curved faces in the result at the size you intend to make the part.
If you need something this conversion cannot give you
If you need editable CAD geometry, don't convert at all. Open the STEP file directly in FreeCAD, Fusion, Onshape or SolidWorks. Every mesh format destroys the exact surfaces, and no later conversion brings them back.
Going the other way
Convert glTF back to STEP exists, but it is not the inverse of this page. Going this way tessellates exact surfaces into triangles. Going back rebuilds a faceted solid out of those triangles. You do not get your original surfaces back, and the round trip is lossy in a way that compounds.
How we know this conversion works
This pair was checked against 44 files from the test corpus on 2026-09-04. Each run parses its own output back in and compares the bounding box, the triangle count and, for closed solids, the volume against the input.
A pair that fails those checks doesn't get a page. That's why this site lists 120 conversions and not the several hundred a format-times-format grid would suggest.