STL to OBJ API

Move a printer mesh into a format built for editing and texturing.

STL is a dead end by design: a flat list of triangles with no grouping, no materials and no UVs. That is fine for a slicer and awkward for everything else. OBJ keeps the same geometry but adds object and group names, and can reference materials — which is why it is the format most 3D tools prefer to work with.

Example

curl -X POST "https://apimycad.com/v1/mesh?to=obj" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -F "file=@part.stl" \
  -o part.obj

Be realistic about what conversion can restore

Converting to OBJ does not recreate information the STL never held. You get the same triangles in a friendlier container — no materials appear from nowhere, no UV map is invented, and the mesh does not become smoother. What you gain is a text-based file you can inspect, diff and open in tooling that dislikes STL.

Both formats are unitless, so the numbers carry across unchanged. Whether they mean millimetres or inches remains a convention on your side.

Common uses

• Bringing a printed part into Blender or Maya for cleanup, remeshing or rendering
• Preparing a scanned or printed model for texturing and presentation work
• Inspecting mesh contents — OBJ is plain text, so you can read it and diff it in git
• Feeding pipelines and libraries that expect OBJ rather than STL

Heading for the web instead?

If the destination is a browser or an AR viewer, skip OBJ and go straight to GLB — one binary file, far smaller, and natively supported by <model-viewer> and three.js.

Related conversions

OBJ to STL API STL to GLB API OBJ to GLB API All conversions

Read the API documentation