I’m printing an object that’s mostly transparent PLA, with some text printed on/in it in regular PLA. I created the text in Fusion by extruding a text sketch object once to create a hole, and then again to create a new body in the shape of the text. (So it’s a solid text object in a hole of the exact same size.)
I’m then exporting everything to an OBJ and pulling it into Bambu Studio. (Why OBJ? I’m having issues with 3MF export from Fusion where some of the text comes in at the wrong size.)
The problem is that the slicer “bleeds” the text object into the surrounding object, which especially in transparent filament ends up looking awful. Based on my initial investigation I can avoid the problem by turning the text object into a separate object in Bambu Studio, which seems to work…but then I can no longer use adaptive layer heights.
This doesn’t specifically address your issue, but I’ve found that layer time/adaptive layers affect the clarity of translucent filaments. You may just be better to select a small layer height and deal with the increased print time.
Have you thought about doing the text as .svg? or exporting as .step or .stl?
Are you exporting as separate parts, or are they one part? I have found I get better results if I export them as separate parts, so that I an assign different filaments on a per-object basis instead of dealing with painting, which can act… weird.
May also be worth trying the text tool in Bambu Studio. The interface is a walking disaster but if you can tolerate it, it’s also an effective way to make text objects with different filament than the rest of the model.
I also do this. It may be “the old way” but I extrude each bit or collection of bits as their own component and then export the components as stl files. (Handy for collections of unconnected but same color bits) They get imported into Studio as a single object made up of multiple parts and I just go through each object and assign colors.
Colors all have clean borders and even get the proper numbers of walls.
+1 for exporting from Fusion as separate parts (bodies) of one model and assigning filaments directly. I posted a full example of that once, with demo design & project, in case it helps: Make flush prints - #23 by MaxThreeD
I do this all the time, create text on transparent filament. I always make the text as bodies within the component in Fusion. I always select the colors by assigning filaments. I almost never use the paint tool in Bambu Studio, as it isn’t always that predictable or controllable. If you use the paint tool to color text, the colors often bleed. I have never had the occasion to use adaptive layer heights so I don’t know how that would effect text.
Here is a trick I sometimes use. If you make text as objects, each letter shows up as a single body. If there is much text, there will be many, many bodies. However, if I create an impossibly thin layer that ties all the text together into a single body in Fusion and Bambu Studio the text becomes easier to manage. When printing, that impossibly thin layer disappears into the rounding errors and one is left with the text and the rest of the intended object.
This doesn’t specifically address your issue, but I’ve found that layer time/adaptive layers affect the clarity of translucent filaments. You may just be better to select a small layer height and deal with the increased print time.
Have you thought about doing the text as .svg? or exporting as .step or .stl?
What would be the advantage of going with SVG? (I have found SVGs to be especially difficult to work with in Fusion. I mean, text is also pretty difficult but SVGs are worse.)
I don’t know much about .step or .stl files…what would be the advantage there?
As for adaptive layers, I’m just starting to explore them—but on my first few prints with them I feel like I’m getting less consistent surfaces.
+1 for exporting from Fusion as separate parts (bodies) of one model and assigning filaments directly. I posted a full example of that once, with demo design & project, in case it helps: Make flush prints - #23 by MaxThreeD
When doing the extrude into a 3D solid, if you extrude as a component instead of as bodies, you’ll get a component that includes all the individual bodies and can be exported as a single “thing”. Really simplifies exporting and then importing into Studio.
All the blue streaks in this print were exported as a single component without needing any layers to tie them together. Same for all the black streaks.
Components are really handy in Fusion and simplify things made of lots of bits a lot. It’s more complicated now in Fusion since you have to be in a design mode that allows components, but I keep using “hybrid” mode that does.
I use Components extensively already, but they’re ultimately made up of bodies which is what gets exported in the end. So with something like a text block I’d indeed extrude all the individual bodies to be grouped under one component (putting aside the “joiner plate” for now). And I could export all bodies in that Component as one “object” (which could potentially be broken up to parts in the slicer, but is only a single object by default).
But how does that translate to having multiple “components” within one Studio object’s tree? In the theoretical example, the text “component” (and all it’s child bodies) is a part of a larger model, itself a top-level component. If I want to apply filament or settings to just the text “component”, I’d have to break that out somehow (split the main model into parts). And unless I’m very mistaken, the Studio object tree has only one nesting level. So that would also break out all the individual character bodies of the original text Component.
Do you see my confusion? Not sure I’m describing it very well…
Even if multiple bodies are encapsulated in a component there are still multiple bodies. As pointed out, even though in Fusion components can be buried within components within components without end, in Bambu Studio, they are all just bodies within the object. Here is one of my models.
There are thousands of bricks and hundreds of stones (which are copied and arrayed). While the model is relatively simple, the fact that there are so many bodies, it completely overloads Fusion and likewise with Bambu Studio. Using the impossibly thin layer method to tie them all together, Fusion and Bambu Studio only see one brick, albeit considerably more complicated than a single brick. Actually I broke it down so each side sees four bricks and one stone with a significant improvement in performance to match.
First, I haven’t done this with thousands of objects like 3dEd. I can see where that might cause problems for the way I do it. I’m more in the up to 100-200 object range.
I do my 2D layouts in CorelDraw to export SVG files to use in Fusion and like in the Santa image where there are lots of same color bits, or where there’s lots of text, everything I want to be a single color or thing gets extruded as a component. They aren’t connected to each other except by being extruded into the same component. They are still “bodies” I guess and selectable individually but if I click on the component name every individual body gets highlighted together. That’s how I export as STL - I export the component.
In Studio, when I import the STL, it imports all the bodies that made up the component at once. The down side in Studio is if I change my mind and want to change color on a single part of that component, I can’t. At least I haven’t figured out how to do that.
But extruding multiple things at the same time into a single component means they have to be the same thickness and also end up the same color - or at least I haven’t found a way around that.
What you might try is just doing it in Fusion. Draw two separate non-touching items and extrude them together as a component. Then export that component (where both bodies are highlighted) as an STL and import that into Studio. You should get the two separate bodies imported.
In Studio, just assign color to it and both parts should show the color. It can take some planning but you can end up with lots of individual bits all configured using the single designator in Studio.
I’m not sure if that makes sense or not. It does work though. I can’t say about thousands of objects though. I can see where that could get unweildy.
Thanks for the reply! I’m always eager to make my workflows more efficient.
Yes that’s what I described in my question. Eg. when using the text tool in a Fusion sketch, then extruding those shapes, one ends up with multiple bodies. These can of course be grouped into a component. And that one component can be exported as a single file, imported into Studio, and, optionally, broken back up into “parts” which are the original Fusion bodies (even preserving the names, with some formats). So yes, all those bodies are grouped together into one top-level object, and can be assigned settings/filaments as a group (or individually).
But the whole model, in Fusion and to be printed, is more than just that one component with a bunch of text character bodies. It is itself a top-level component, with sub-components and their own bodies. To get that into the slicer, it needs to be exported as a single file (at least initially… in some cases individual parts can be replaced/updated later). But Studio has no concept of sub-components. So if/when the imported model is “split to parts” all those individual character bodies are now separate parts, mixed with all the other bodies of the model, no longer grouped in any way (though they may end up in consecutive order in the list).
Are you importing each component separately into Studio and keeping them as separate top-level objects? And having them all aligned/positioned somehow?
I’m definitely not understanding something in your workflow because I don’t understand what this means… parts can have filaments/settings applied to them, no?
I’d love to see the Studio object tree view of that Santa piece, it may help understand a lot more (thousand words and all that… ).
Oh, I don’t split them into parts again. I leave them as a single part made up of lots of little bits. That way I just assign color/filament to a single thing and all the individual bits get the assignment at the same time.
But I do import them at the same time. When you import more than one STL at a time you get prompted if you want to keep it as a single thing made up of the various parts. If you say yes, they all come in together in proper register/position as long as they were in proper position when exported from Fusion. I can update parts in Fusion, export, then reload from disk in Studio and it will USUALLY reload in the proper position but for some reason there can be minor misalignments appear. In that case I just re-import all the STL files again and they all go back to proper relative positions.
If I’m understanding the question, yep, in Studio if I have a “part” that was a component in Fusion made up of a bunch of individual bodies, when imported into Studio I haven’t figured out how to set filament for just one part of it. It gets one assignment that applies to all bodies.
Here’s the Santa in Studio with the background blue selected. Is this what you were interested in?
One other bit, the cool plate was the last plate I used for a print. It normally prints on textured PEI. Studio doesn’t seem to honor some choices in 3mf files.
Aha, selecting multiple files during Studio import will load them all as an assembly! So the components are properly positioned in respect to each other and don’t have to touch the plate. I tend to ignore the “assembly” feature, but this does make it more useful potentially.
And right, the individual components of an assembly can’t be broken up into separate parts, like with a top-level import. That explains my other quandary.
Thanks for explaining, appreciate it!
I can update parts in Fusion, export, then reload from disk in Studio and it will USUALLY reload in the proper position but for some reason there can be minor misalignments appear.
Yep, same here, with breaking up a top-level object into parts, then updating individual parts from individual imports. Works as long as the overall dimensions of the model haven’t changed, or by chance the new relative coordinates of a part match the old ones.
BTW another useful reason to group a bunch of bodies is when using them as modifiers, for example to reinforce a bunch of holes on a model. It’s nice to have them all grouped together for quick property adjustments.
I was thinking importing the letters as SVG into studio. STEP and STL are geometry based files, shouldn’t deform after import.
Oh interesting. I’ve been reluctant to do much modeling in Studio because then I kinda lose the advantages of all the parametric editing in Fusion, no? Basically when I change the model and re-import I’d need to redo all the Studio stuff.
Each part/stl that is imported into Studio can be reloaded from disk in a flyout menu. So far for me at least it doesn’t affect the print settings like walls/infill/etc or modifiers for support or holes and such. After a reload from disk, if the change was small it’s not necessarily easy to tell the part even updated.
But sometimes a reload from disk can move a part out of register with others if multiple parts were imported together. When that happens I do end up having to re-import the parts and lose all the customizations.
