STL

The STL format is known by two different names: Standard Tesselation Language and the STereoLithography File Format. It is a triangular representation of a three-dimensional surface geometry, often used for 3D printers and scanners. STL has a binary variant and an ASCII text variant. Color information can be included in binary STL; ASCII STL is only for the geometry of a model. ASCII STL files can be very large, which is why the smaller binary version is used more often.

In the past, exporting models from CAD software to STL has proven to be prone to errors.

STL is in principle well supported and will be easy to read, especially the ASCII STL text format. ASCII is preferable to binary, but because these formats can be very large and because of the possible error sensitivity of STL export from CAD, DANS advises using other file formats.

STL is a non-preferred format for file type 3D.

© DANS. R.5.5.T.16.P.15 Version 1.0, November 28, 2024