Home > Supported File Formats > SOLIDWORKS to PLY

How to convert SOLIDWORKS (.sldasm,.sldprt) to PLY (Stanford .ply)?

PolyTrans|CAD+DCC performs mathematically precise CAD, DCC/Animation, GIS and BIM 3D file conversions into all key downstream 3D packages and file formats. Okino software is used and trusted throughout the world by many tens of thousands of 3D professionals in mission & production critical environments, backed by respectable personal support directly from our core development team.

SOLIDWORKS

Since the mid-1990s SOLIDWORKS has dominated the mid-tier MCAD solids modelling market amongst its closest rivals of ProE/Creo, Unigraphics NX, Autodesk Inventor and Solid Edge.

SOLIDWORKS has been Okino's #1 most requested and used MCAD importer (outside of STEP and IGES) for well over 25 years. We do not use reverse engineered technology, as commonly used by other companies, but rather license the real and actual runtime system from SOLIDWORKS Corporation on a yearly basis. This has allowed our SOLIDWORKS importer to remain entirely error free for over 25 years and is incredible fast to import and convert the most massive of assemblies.

Conversion from SOLIDWORKS is best handled via native .sldasm and .sldasm files, or equally well via STEP AP204 or "IGES BREP solids".

PLY

PLY can generally be considered a simple, 1990s-era, university research oriented polygonal (mesh) 3D file format designed to store data from 3D scanners. It was developed by Greg Turk and others in the Stanford graphics. Its design was inspired by the Wavefront .obj format.

PLY was meant to be a simple, easily parsable file format and hence only conveys basic geometry information for a single object definition with polygon vertices, vertex colors vertex normals and UV texture coordinates. No materials nor hierarchy, lights or cameras are supported.

SOLIDWORKS import converter's overview

PLY export converter's overview