q3d is what you should want to use if you want your application to export/import simple 3d meshes.
It only supports triangle-based meshes. There is no support for NURBS surfaces, Bezier curves, ... It is not meant to be a primary format of storage for a 3d modelling program, or to represent parametric geometry. Instead, it should be used for 'baked' assets, for instance in games, CAM or CAD assembly.
It's based on FlatBuffers, so you get importers/exporters for 'free' in at least the following programming languages:
- C
- C++
- C#
- Go
- Java
- Lua
- Python
- Rust
Currently we ship the spec for a 'q3d object' (q3do) file format. This format defines a single Object, that in turn contains multiple Meshes, each Mesh being made up of a list of Triangles and a Material.
For more information, see object.fbs.
- SolveSpace, an open source 3D parametric CAM (pull request)
- HorizonEDA, an open source PCB CAD (pullrequest)
Other file format?
- STL: proprietary, no canonical colour support
- STEP: designed by a committee, closed ISO spec
- OBJ/MTL: split files for object and material data, complex feature set
- AMF: designed by a drunk committee, closed ISO spec
- COLLADA: designed by a batshit insane committee
- PLY: underspecified
Features?
- Units other than millimeters: No.
- Textured triangles
- Examples
- Toolkit (STL converter, viewer, analyzer)
This entire repository (including the specification, documentation and example code) is licensed under CC0, which means you are free to use it as if it were public domain.
First, read the specification IDL (object.fbs).
You will need FlatBuffers-the-library-for-your language, and FlatBuffers-the-flatc-compiler.
See the FlatBuffers website for more information on how to use FlatBuffers.