Read, write and manipulate both ASCII and binary STL files

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'stl'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install stl

require 'stl'

stl = STL.read('my_awesome.stl')
stl.faces			    # => [Face, ...]

To convert an ASCII STL file to a binary file:

STL.read('ascii.stl').write('binary.stl', :binary)

Writing binaries files is actually the default, so you can also leave off the last argument to write, if you want.

STL.read('ascii.stl').write('binary.stl')

You can also convert binary files to ASCII.

STL.read('binary.stl').write('ascii.stl', :ascii)

There's an easier way to do a format conversion, and it doesn't require that you know the original format. Simply use the convert method, and the format of the input will be toggled (ASCII to binary, or binary to ASCII). The converted filename will be the same as the original, but with '-ascii' or '-binary' appended, as appropriate.

STL.convert('ascii.stl')	# => ascii-binary.stl
STL.convert('binary.stl')	# => binary-ascii.stl

Copyright 2014 Brandon Fosdick [email protected] and released under the BSD license.