COLLADA is an open-source XML format for storing interactive 3D applications. It was designed by Sony in collaboration with various large graphic design organizations. Today, COLLADA is managed by the non-profit organization Khronos Group. COLLADA .dae has been adopted by ISO as a publicly available specification. COLLADA is supported by popular software packages such as (GIS application) ArcGIS, (CAD application) Autodesk Infrastructure Modeller, Google Earth v1.4, Mac OS X 10.6 Preview. COLLADA supports various graphic 3D elements. It is intended as an intermediate format: to redirect 3D information in parts to other software. However, the file specification of COLLADA is not very strict, which means that interoperability between COLLADA exports from different software can cause problems. Although DANS marked COLLADA as a preferred format, X3D is preferred if 3D data can be supplied in X3D.

COLLADA is a preferred format for file type 3D.