What it stores
- Vertices and faces
- Vertex colours and normals
- Scanner properties such as intensity or confidence
- ASCII or binary encoding
3D FILE FORMAT
PLY: the scanner's mesh format
PLY (Polygon File Format) stores vertices and faces with arbitrary properties: colours, normals, intensity, confidence. It is the native output of many 3D scanners and photogrammetry tools.
At a glance
What it does not store
- Units
- Materials and textures
- Scene hierarchy and animation
When to use it
- 3D scans and photogrammetry
- Point and mesh data with colours
- Exchanging data between scanning tools
Limits to know
- No unit metadata
- Point-cloud PLY files are not meshes
- Support for custom properties varies
Convert to and from
Questions about the format
Is PLY better than STL?+
PLY can store colours and normals; STL only has triangles. For printing, STL or 3MF remain the slicer formats.
Can I convert a point cloud?+
No: this converter needs faces. A point cloud must be meshed first.
Does PLY store units?+
No, coordinates are unitless; check the scale of your scan.