Binary STL cube (12 triangles)

Why test with this file

The smallest useful solid for testing a binary STL reader. Its volume, surface area and bounding box are known exactly, so the numbers your software reports can be checked by hand.

What to check

After your application has processed sample-cube-binary.stl, confirm that:

• The reader takes the file as binary. Its header does not begin with the word "solid", which is how readers tell the two encodings apart.
• The mesh has 12 triangles and, once duplicate corners are merged, 8 vertices.
• The computed volume is 1 and the bounding box runs from 0 to 1 on every axis.

First bytes of the file

The first 64 bytes of sample-cube-binary.stl as a hex dump: offset, bytes, then the same bytes as text.

00000000  42 69 6e 61 72 79 20 53 54 4c 20 73 61 6d 70 6c  |Binary STL sampl|
00000010  65 3a 20 61 20 75 6e 69 74 20 63 75 62 65 20 6f  |e: a unit cube o|
00000020  66 20 31 32 20 74 72 69 61 6e 67 6c 65 73 2e 20  |f 12 triangles. |
00000030  53 61 6d 70 6c 65 54 65 73 74 46 69 6c 65 73 20  |SampleTestFiles |

Preview

This STL file is binary, so there is no text to show. Download it and open it in an application that reads STL.

Technical details

Validated for expected format and integrity. As with any download, scan the file with your own security tools before opening it. How files are made and checked

Download from the command line and verify

Fetch the file with curl, then compare its checksum with the SHA-256 value above.

curl -o sample-cube-binary.stl 'https://www.sampletestfiles.com/downloads/samples/sample-cube-binary.stl'
sha256sum sample-cube-binary.stl     # Linux
shasum -a 256 sample-cube-binary.stl # macOS

On Windows, run Get-FileHash sample-cube-binary.stl -Algorithm SHA256 in PowerShell. A matching value proves that the download is complete and unaltered.

Related files

All curated sample files