3D printing has rapidly gone from a technology only found in well-equipped facilities to devices you can buy off Amazon for a modest price. However, to actually 3D print you need a file prepared for 3D printing and that doesn’t mean your normal SLDPRT files. So how can a SOLIDWORKS user prepare their models for 3D printing easily? Dassault answered this with the Print3D tool built into SOLIDWORKS. In this Tech Tip, we’ll go over the basic usage of the tool.
Print3D SOLIDWORKS Tool
Here we have a very basic model, just a simple cube.
To activate the Print3D tool simply go to File > Print3D.
This brings up the PropertyManager window for the Print3D tool. As you can see by the highlighted section, the first thing it asks for is the bottom plane of the model.
You can select any face of the model, and in this case, with a cube they’re identical. Once you’ve selected a good bottom plane the next task is to select your printer. If you click the dropdown both in the Printer selection and pick “Manage Favorites” you will find premade setups for name-brand printers.
SOLIDWORKS has built-in specifications for a wide array of popular 3D printers, but if you don’t see your model listed you can make a custom printer by inputting the width, depth, and height of your printer’s bed into the Printer section. Here, we’ve used the size for the popular Creality Ender series of printers. If you are making a custom print size, please consult the manufacturer’s documentation for your printer for the correct bed size.
Once you’ve either selected a printer or input the print bed’s measurements SOLIDWORKS will draw a boundary box showing the volume around your model. This is useful for making sure that your model will fit the print volume of the 3D printer you are using.
The model orientation section lets you maneuver the model in the 3D space of the print bed to position it more properly. This helps for printing multiple pieces at once or for awkward shapes. You can manually adjust placement via the angle and translation axes in the tool or click the “Orient to Fit” button to do so automatically.
If you find that your model is too big for your printer, the Print3D tool offers a handy scaling function in the property manager. You can choose the scaling factor manually or click the “Scale to Fit” button.
Finally, there is the Options section, which lets you select quality, change infill, add supports/rafts, and check the properties of the printer selected. Quality determines the fineness of the layers, infill percentage lets you change how much of the inner model is printer, and supports/rafts are extra print pieces that help adhere the model to the print bed to ensure proper printing. While SOLIDWORKS can print directly to connected printers most users have a favorite slicing software for their prints and you can easily save this setup model to a STL file, 3D manufacturing file (.3MF), or additive manufacturing file (.amf) for final preparations before printing the models.
It will prompt you where to save the file, and you can change the name if desired. It will then give you a popup that lists the triangles, file size, and format as well as confirms that you want to save the file.
Once you approve this the STL file will be saved and ready to use in your favorite slicing software.
