CAD & 3D

CAD & 3D file converter

Engineering drawings and product models are often confidential. Every converter here runs inside your browser with open-source engines compiled to WebAssembly — LibreDWG for AutoCAD drawings, Open CASCADE for STEP, IGES and BREP solids, and Assimp for mesh formats. Your file is processed on your own device and never uploaded, so there is nothing to trust us with.

AutoCAD drawings

Open DWG drawings without AutoCAD by converting them to the documented DXF format. Open the full tool.

DWG → DXF

CAD solids to printable meshes

STEP, IGES and BREP hold exact engineering geometry. Mesh them to STL for slicers or OBJ for render tools. Open the full tool.

STEP → STL STEP → OBJ STP → STL STP → OBJ IGES → STL IGES → OBJ IGS → STL BREP → STL

3D models to glTF / GLB

Bring OBJ, STL, FBX, COLLADA, PLY, 3DS and 3MF models to the web, AR and modern engines. Open the full tool.

OBJ → GLB STL → GLB FBX → GLB DAE → GLB PLY → GLB 3DS → GLB 3MF → GLB GLTF → GLB GLB → GLTF OBJ → GLTF STL → GLTF FBX → GLTF DAE → GLTF PLY → GLTF 3MF → GLTF 3DS → GLTF

The formats, briefly

DWG (AutoCAD Drawing): DWG is AutoCAD’s native binary drawing format. It stores 2D drafting and 3D geometry together with layers, blocks, dimensions and text. The format is proprietary and changes with AutoCAD releases, which is why many programs cannot open it.
DXF (Drawing Exchange Format): DXF is Autodesk’s documented exchange format for drawings, published since 1982. Its ASCII variant is plain text, so almost every CAD, CAM and vector program can read it.
STEP (ISO 10303): STEP is the ISO standard for exchanging exact 3D solid models. It describes geometry as precise mathematical surfaces (B-rep and NURBS), not triangles, so a cylinder is stored as a true cylinder.
IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification): IGES is the older US exchange standard for CAD surfaces and wireframes, first published in 1980; its last revision (5.3) dates from 1996. Many IGES files contain loose surfaces rather than closed solids.
BREP (Open CASCADE boundary representation): BREP is the native file format of the Open CASCADE geometry kernel. It stores exact boundary-representation solids, and FreeCAD uses it internally for its shapes.
STL (stereolithography): STL, introduced in 1987 for 3D Systems’ stereolithography machines, describes a surface only as a list of triangles. It carries no colour, no materials and no units.
OBJ (Wavefront): OBJ is a simple text mesh format from Wavefront Technologies. It stores vertices, faces, normals and texture coordinates; materials live in a separate .mtl file next to it.
FBX (Autodesk Filmbox): FBX is Autodesk’s proprietary interchange format for meshes, materials, skeletons and animation. It is the de-facto format for moving animated assets between content tools and game engines.
DAE (COLLADA): DAE is COLLADA, an XML interchange format maintained by the Khronos Group. It can hold scenes with meshes, materials, cameras, lights and animation.
PLY (Stanford Polygon): PLY, created at Stanford for 3D scanning research, stores meshes or point clouds and is good at keeping per-vertex colour.
3DS (3D Studio): 3DS is the binary format of the original DOS 3D Studio. It is limited — 65,536 vertices per mesh and 8.3 texture filenames — but huge numbers of older models still exist only as .3ds.
3MF (3D Manufacturing Format): 3MF is a ZIP container of XML created by the 3MF Consortium (Microsoft, HP, Autodesk and others) as a modern replacement for STL. Unlike STL it records units, colours, materials and multiple objects.
glTF (GL Transmission Format): glTF is the Khronos Group’s open standard for delivering 3D models, often called “the JPEG of 3D”. A .gltf file is JSON that describes meshes and physically based (PBR) materials, with binary data and textures alongside or embedded.
GLB (binary glTF): GLB is glTF packed into one binary file: scene description, geometry and textures together. That single self-contained file is why the web and AR use it.