Free Online Point Cloud Viewer
Open PLY, PCD, and XYZ point cloud files in your browser. Adjust point size, switch between color modes, and explore your data in 3D.
Supported Point Cloud Formats
PLY
Polygon File Format — supports vertex colors, normals, and custom properties. Common output from photogrammetry and LiDAR.
PCD
Point Cloud Data — native format of the Point Cloud Library (PCL). Stores XYZ, color, normals, and intensity.
XYZ
Simple ASCII format with one point per line. Lightweight and widely supported by point cloud software.
Color Modes
- Vertex — Uses the colors stored in the file (RGB per point)
- Height — Maps point elevation to a blue-green-red gradient
- Flat — Applies a single uniform color to all points
Nothing here is uploaded
Your point cloud stays on your machine. The browser reads the file directly from your disk and renders it locally; no copy is sent to us, there is no account to make, and there is nothing stored to come back and delete. Close the tab and it is gone. That is the point for anyone handling scans they do not own — a customer's part, a memorial portrait, a survey of somebody's property, an engraving file a client has not published yet. You can confirm the scan is dense enough and the colors came through without routing confidential geometry through a third party first. The trade-off is that everything runs on your own hardware, so a very large cloud is limited by your device's memory.
PLY
PLY is the format most point cloud work ends up in, because it stores a color alongside every point rather than treating color as a separate texture. Photogrammetry apps write it after reconstructing a scene from photographs, handheld and turntable scanners export it, and subsurface crystal engraving depends on it — there, each point is one dot the laser will burn inside the glass, so the file is effectively the toolpath. Open it here with Vertex color mode to see exactly the colors that were saved, and raise the point size until the surface reads as a surface rather than a haze.
PCD
PCD comes from the Point Cloud Library and is what robotics, LiDAR and depth-camera tooling tends to produce. Its header names the fields each point carries, which is why one PCD holds nothing but coordinates while another adds color, surface normals, or the intensity of the laser return — genuinely useful for judging how confident a scan is. It stores no faces and no materials, only points, so nothing is lost by viewing it here. A PCD with no color field simply renders white in Vertex mode; switch to Height to read its shape.
XYZ
XYZ is plain text, one point per line: three numbers for position, and in some exports three more for color. No header, no units, no metadata — which makes it the format everything can read and the format that tells you nothing about itself. Surveying instruments, LiDAR processing tools and scientific datasets all emit it, and it is the usual fallback when two programs share no better common ground. Expect large files for modest point counts, since every coordinate is spelled out as text rather than packed into binary.
When something looks wrong
- My PLY shows up white with no color
- Vertex mode draws the colors stored in the file, and when the file has none every point falls back to white. Many scanners and conversion tools save geometry only, and some write color under property names the standard does not define. Re-export with vertex colors turned on if you can. In the meantime, Height mode colors points by elevation so you can still read the shape.
- The cloud loaded but I can barely see it
- Look at the point count in the panel first — if points loaded, they are there. Very small points are drawn fainter as they shrink below a pixel, so a cloud can fade almost to nothing at the low end of the slider. Drag Point Size up until the points solidify. Reset camera brings the view back if you have orbited away from the cloud.
- My scan is too sparse to make out
- Raise Point Size until neighboring points overlap; that alone turns a spray of dots into a readable surface, and it is how you judge whether coverage is genuinely adequate. If gaps remain at a size where points are already merging, the scan itself is thin — rescan closer to the subject, with more overlap between passes, and in even lighting.
Questions about this viewer
- How is this different from the 3D file viewer?
- This page is built for points. It takes PLY, PCD and XYZ, and adds a point size slider and the Vertex, Height and Flat color modes, which is what you need to judge a scan. The 3D file viewer is the general one — it also opens meshes such as STL, OBJ and GLB, but without the point controls.
- Can I check a crystal engraving file before I run it?
- Yes, and it is worth doing. Open the exported PLY here, use Vertex mode to confirm the colors survived the export, and raise the point size to see where the dots sit densely and where they thin out. It is a quick sanity check that the file holds what you expect before it goes anywhere near a machine and a blank.
- Can I edit, crop or thin a cloud here?
- No. This is a viewer, not an editor — point size and color mode change how the cloud is drawn on screen, never the file. Your original is untouched, and nothing is saved back. For work that changes a cloud, take it into the studios or a dedicated point cloud editor and bring the result back here to check it.