/ ply / viewer
PLY viewer
Open a .ply file and see it, with its size, triangle count and mesh checks. PLY stores no unit, so the size assumes millimetres. It renders in this tab.
Your file never leaves your browser. STEP, IGES and BREP fetch the OpenCASCADE kernel (2.3 MB over the wire); 3DM fetches rhino3dm (2.5 MB before compression); every mesh and scene format fetches neither. Nothing downloads until you pick a file.what we bundle ↗
estimate · above the measured floor
This will take about
Your file is . STEP parsing measured at across real CAD files, and this machine benchmarked . Nothing has been downloaded yet.
- Kernel to download — OpenCASCADE
- —
- Parse and tessellate
nobody should wait that long without having been told
above 25 MB · may not fit in a browser
This file may be too big for a browser
At this needs roughly here. Whether it fits depends on the geometry, not the size: a large CAD assembly can open, while a much smaller STEP exported from a mesh can run out of memory. If it does, this page says so, and the file never leaves your computer either way.
If it does not open here
- Autodesk Meshmixerfree · windows · macos
- Blenderfree · windows · macos · linux
- CloudComparefree · windows · macos · linux
the same sourced table as the format page — dated, not invented
we never block the attempt, we only tell you the cost first
rendered locally · — fps
drag to orbit · scroll to zoom · shift-drag to pan
Why your PLY shows points instead of a surface
PLY is a scanning format, and a great many PLY files contain vertices with no faces at all. That is a point cloud. It will display here, but there is no surface: converting it to STL or any solid format produces nothing, and this viewer says so rather than handing you an empty file.
If you need a mesh from a scan, the surface has to be reconstructed first in scanning or mesh software. That is a modelling step with its own settings, not a format conversion.
PLY also carries no unit, so the dimensions shown assume millimetres. Scanner output is often in metres or in scanner-specific units, which makes a known reference measurement worth checking. The PLY guide explains what the format stores.