Home > Supported File Formats > ACIS SAT to PLY

How to convert ACIS SAT (.sat,.sab) 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.

ACIS SAT

ACIS 'SAT' (ASCII) and 'SAB' (binary) are the native 3D file formats of the Spatial ACIS solids modelling toolkit. Spatial licenses this toolkit to third party developers upon which they can develop their own 3D software and/or converters.

From Okino's own perspective, the ACIS SAT file format was more prevalent and popular in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s. However, thereafter, several major software vendors moved off of the ACIS platform and onto other alternative platforms to build their software. We really do not have any of our customers utilize the SAT file format anymore as there are better or more native methods to source such MCAD data (such as STEP, IGES and Parasolid).

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.

ACIS SAT import converter's overview

PLY export converter's overview