Convert STP to XLS

Engineering teams need this conversion when purchasing, production, inventory, or reporting software requires a tabular bill of materials or CAD metadata. The result is an Excel workbook containing extracted values, not an editable 3D model.

What the STP format is

STP, also called STEP, is the ISO 10303 exchange format for product and mechanical CAD data. A .stp or .step file can contain solid and surface geometry, multiple bodies, assemblies, colors, layers, and limited product metadata.

CAD applications such as Siemens NX, CATIA, SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, FreeCAD, and PTC Creo use STEP to exchange components, supplier models, and neutral archive data. The file may contain one part or an assembly hierarchy. Names, part numbers, materials, and custom properties depend on the exporting system and STEP application protocol.

What the XLS format is

XLS is the Microsoft Excel 97–2003 binary workbook format. It stores worksheets, cells, formulas, formatting, and tabular records, so it can hold bills of materials, part registers, inspection results, and mass-property reports.

XLS cannot store native STEP solids, faces, parametric features, or assembly constraints. Use .xls only when the receiving application requires the legacy format; .xlsx is preferable for new work because it supports newer Excel features and up to 1,048,576 rows per worksheet.

How to convert STP data to XLS

Free desktop workflow with FreeCAD and LibreOffice

1. Open model.stp or model.step in FreeCAD with File → Open. Confirm that the expected bodies or assembly components were imported.
2. Inspect the Model tree and Property view. Select fields such as labels, part numbers, quantities, material names, placements, bounding-box dimensions, volume, and surface area. FreeCAD can calculate geometric volume and area; mass requires a valid material density.
3. Create a table in FreeCAD's Spreadsheet workbench, using one component or one unique part per row. Add units to every measurement heading, for example Length (mm) and Volume (mm³).
4. Export or save the table as parts.csv. Open the CSV in LibreOffice Calc with File → Open, select the correct delimiter and character encoding, then use File → Save As and choose Excel 97–2003 (*.xls).

CSV is only an intermediate format: it does not preserve formulas, cell types, formatting, multiple worksheets, or assembly hierarchy. Set identifier columns to text in Calc so values such as 00127 do not become 127.

Structured BOM workflow with SolidWorks

1. Open the STEP file in SolidWorks and verify whether the importer created an assembly or only a multibody part.
2. For an assembly, create a bill of materials with Insert → Tables → Bill of Materials. Select the required columns and choose whether the table reports unique parts or every assembly instance.
3. Use the BOM table's save or export command to create an Excel-compatible file. If the available output is .xlsx or another spreadsheet format, open it in LibreOffice Calc or Excel and save it as Excel 97–2003 (*.xls) when required.

This workflow is more suitable than manual entry when the imported assembly has usable component structure, but STEP import can still omit custom properties and manufacturing data.

Automated extraction

For recurring jobs, use FreeCAD's Python console or a CAD automation API to iterate through document objects, read labels and properties, calculate geometry values, and write rows to CSV. Convert the CSV with LibreOffice, then inspect the workbook:

libreoffice --headless --convert-to xls --outdir output parts.csv

For reliable automation, define the unit system, column names, unique-part or instance-counting rule, decimal precision, and treatment of missing properties before processing files. A CSV-to-XLS web service such as CloudConvert can handle the spreadsheet stage for nonconfidential data if its current format support and privacy terms meet your requirements; general online services should not be expected to extract a meaningful BOM directly from STEP.

Quality and compatibility limits

There is no one-to-one STP-to-XLS geometry conversion. The spreadsheet contains selected metadata or calculated measurements, not a 3D object that Excel can edit.

Check the imported model against the source for units, coordinate orientation, component count, part names, duplicate instances, and decimal precision. STEP files commonly omit cost, manufacturing attributes, material density, and application-specific custom properties. A displayed part label is not necessarily a validated part number.

Legacy XLS worksheets are limited to 65,536 rows and 256 columns. Large bills of materials should use XLSX, CSV, or a database instead. Do not upload proprietary STEP files to an online service unless its retention, access, and data-processing terms are acceptable.