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HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING And Start Producing Physical 3D Models in Hours Instead of Weeks > > HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................3 How do AEC professionals use 3D printed models? . 4 Preparation for 3D printing ...................6 Decide what would you like to print . 6 Choose your scale . 6 Give your model form . 7 Choose a file format . 8 Print it...........................10 Summary .............................10 HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 3 INTRODUCTION As every designer knows, there’s magic in transforming a great idea For a primer on 3D printing, into a tangible and useful object you can hold in your hand. read our white paper: Architects, engineers and construction (AEC) professionals are How 3D Printing Works fast discovering the myriad benefits of 3D printing, including: The Vision, Innovation and Technologies • unleashing creativity Behind Inkjet 3D Printing • shortening project timelines • lowering costs • improving communication • securing quick approvals Firms are discovering a new ability to print physical 3D models in hours instead of the weeks needed for handcrafting, while reducing costs and improving model accuracy. The new capability is enabling more productive design reviews; accelerating design phases; and reducing the time and money necessary to create models for review, presentation and marketing. Plus, more accurate models clarify designs for clients and officials, facilitating the approval process and ultimately resulting in more beautiful, higher-quality building designs. Just as with building information modeling (BIM) software, 3D printing is becoming a strategic necessity for AEC firms. The question is no longer “should we do it?”, it is “how do we implement 3D printing into our practice today?”. This paper will answer that question by reviewing the wide variety of 3D printing applications in the AEC industry, and then demystifying the process of preparing a digital model for 3D printing. HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 4 HOW DO AEC PROFESSIONALS USE 3D PRINTED MODELS? You can use a 3D printed model in the same way that you use handcrafted 3D models and renderings. Applications include client presentation, massing, detailed models, building performance analysis, clash detection, and building construction phases. The following examples illustrate how firms of every size use 3D printing to improve design quality, client satisfaction, marketing effectiveness and regulatory relations. > Regulatory Approvals 3D printed models can be combined with other elements to quickly, easily and affordably create multicolor presentations to clients and team stakeholders, helping to close deals and win faster approvals. < Massing Model Classic white massing models convey exterior form and proportion. Contemporary design shapes are well suited to 3D printing. > Urban Planning 3D printing this Midtown Manhattan cityscape from CAD and GPS data is quicker, more affordable and more accurate than handcrafting the model. Midtown Manhattan model, printed on a ZPrinter 650, data courtesy of Parsons Brinckerhoff HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 5 Note the use of color to depict design details, complex analysis results, clash detection and construction phases. > Detailed Model Show complex exterior/interior details with color and texture. > Building Energy Analysis You can perform a solar radiation analysis in your BIM software and 3D print the results. This model highlights hot and cold spots over a 24-hour period. The China House model courtesy of Autodesk, Inc. > Clash Detection A good plant design packs a lot of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems into a tight space. 3D print the model, detect any clashes, and collaborate with the construction team. Autodesk Ecotect Analysis model courtesy of Autodesk, Inc. Bentley MicroStation plant model printed on a ZPrinter 650, courtesy of Shinryo International and Team-S. HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 6 PREPARATION FOR 3D PRINTING Models like these don’t pop out of the 3D printer like your morning toast, but you really wouldn’t want that to be the case. Most designers want control over 3D printing variables in order to produce a specific model type. These variables can include which details to preserve or hide, what scale works best for what you’re trying to communicate, and even what software to use in the first place. Since some 3D software was never designed to produce data for 3D printing however, you’ll have to take a few easy steps to prepare the files. The rest of the 3D printing process, the complicated work, is handled by the software and a ZPrinter.1 The good news is that if you know the basics of BIM or 3D CAD, you’re 90 percent of the way to printing AEC models successfully. Step 1. Decide what you would like to print Sauna house design by Juha Savisalo First, consider what you’re trying to accomplish with your model, and select the features to print. Will it be a conceptual design study showing mass, forms and proportion? If so, then don’t worry about internal details. You’ll want to hollow out your design to save material in the printing. Will it be a very specific and unique architectural detail? In that case, just take that section of the Figure 1. Detail Study. Detailed design studies can benefit from realistic material digital model and scale it to fit your 3D printer’s colors and textures build chamber (fig. 1). Step 2. Choose your scale If you designed products instead of buildings, Non-load you would often print full-scale models of design bearing features – scaled to print Detail features – concepts for review. Most 3D printers are large about 0.50″ scaled to print about 0.025″ enough to print a shoe, cell phone, toothbrush, toy, computer fan, brake pad, or anything else smaller than a breadbox. In AEC, however, you have to think about model scale (fig. 2). Most AEC models are 1/50th to 1/1000th their Load bearing features – scaled true size, and that has implications for 3D printing. thick enough to keep structure A load-bearing feature in a 3D printed model, together (about for example, has a recommended thickness of 0.200″) 0.200 inches (about 5 mm). Detail features can be printed as small as 0.025 inches (about 0.6 mm). So if you’re trying to print, say, a 10 cm-diameter post at 1/1000th scale, it will effectively disappear Figure 2. Scaling guidelines from your model unless you thicken it in your original model. 1 ZPrinter is the collective name for 3D printers offered by Z Corporation. HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 7 These scaling concerns explain why it’s critical to define what you’re try- ing to communicate to your stakeholders. Exterior shape and form? If so, then delete all internal features and hollow out the model to minimize material consumption. Are you trying to show a specific design concept? If so, section your model and scale it down only as much as needed.2 If you’re having a hard time selecting what to print, consider making several 3D prints, the same way you’d make two or three renderings for a client presentation. Figure 3. Online thickness calculator The math in scaling is easier than you might suspect. This free thickness calculator is designed specifically for AEC 3D printing http://www.cadspan.com/calculator (fig. 3). Step 3. Give your model form Once you’ve defined the model you wish to build and scaled the digital design, you need to review geometry. A 3D printer can print only what’s in the digital design. A design with gaps or holes will not print properly, so your digital model must have “watertight” geometry. And since lines and planes are abstract concepts, they must be thickened into solids to be 3D printable. Fortunately, most current AEC design software products automatically produce watertight designs with printable forms. Many have dedicated tools for checking and editing geometric meshes and cleaning up models prior 3D printing. And in many instances, designers have the choice of using 3D tools (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc.) or 2D tools (planes and lines). Opting for the 3D tools will make printing significantly easier. Unlike software that produces watertight designs automatically, design visualization software models sometimes need more preparation. The simple steps described in this section are common for design visualization software like Google SketchUp or Autodesk 3ds Max. For example, a planar panel is sometimes used in software to represent a column. While this works for on-screen or on-paper visualization, that plane has no real-world shape. It’s nothing more than a geometrical concept. A 3D printer can’t print it until it’s extruded to create a 3D column (fig. 4) Problem: Solution: Flat panels too Extrude to at least thin to print 3 mm to make them printable Figure 4. Google SketchUp images 2 The ZPrinter® 650 has the industry’s largest build bed at 10 x 15 x 8 inches (254 x 381 x 203 mm), for larger scale models. HOW TO PREPARE AEC FILES FOR 3D PRINTING 8 The designer must close all open planes in this model to make the design watertight. You can simply draw rectangular “face” entities to close these open faces (fig. 5): Figure 5. Closing up the planes Step 4. Choose a file format Once your design is watertight and geometrically printable, the next step is to export the BIM/CAD data in a file format that a 3D printer recognizes. Here, too, you have choices and control. All the popular BIM/CAD software products provide the capability to export basic geometry information as an STL file — the industry standard for monochromatic 3D printing3.

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