Extract text from 3D surface files (SURF)
To convert SURF surfaces to another format, you need Amira-Avizo or other 3D software.
To convert other file formats to the "Surface Geometry Data File" file type, you need software like Amira-Avizo or a similar tool.
A .SURF file typically serves one of several highly specialized purposes. The most common use is as a 3D surface geometry data file for scientific visualization software like Amira-Avizo. It can also function as a CAD surface material file in Nemetschek Allplan, a game surface properties file for OMSI The Bus Simulator, or as a surface electrokinetic analysis data file generated by Anton Paar SurPASS instruments.
The primary disadvantage of .SURF files is their severe lack of interoperability. Scientific 3D .SURF files are proprietary and often require expensive, specialized software subscriptions just to open or view. Game-specific and analysis data files are generally useless outside their native environments. Allplan material files are essentially renamed TIFF files, but standard image viewers and web browsers will reject them because of the unrecognized extension.
If you are dealing with a 3D geometry file, converting to OBJ, STL, or PLY is highly recommended to restore compatibility with standard 3D modeling tools like Blender, though specialized hyper-surface metadata might be lost. For Allplan surface textures, converting to standard TIFF or PNG will make the texture globally readable. For SurPASS data, conversion to XML or CSV is optimal for cross-platform data analysis.
Because .SURF is often a closed, proprietary format, standard online converters fail to process it. Just drag and drop your file to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible. Our analysis engine can detect if your .SURF file contains an underlying TIFF image or structured XML text, allowing you to view its internal content and potentially extract the useful data without needing the original software.
Convert.Guru analyzes your SURF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted SRF, UV, APF and GE3 files.
If you want to convert SURF file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use Amira-Avizo or similar software from the "3D Surface Geometry Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to SURF, try Amira-Avizo or another comparable tool in the "3D Surface Geometry Data" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our SURF converter.