STEP format is a kind of standard exchange format that is widely used in CAD software. Almost all CAD software can export models or assemblies expressed in STEP format. That means models in assembly can be combined and expressed easily in STEP files without accuracy loss.
Bambu Studio supports importing models and assembly from STEP files. And this is based on OpenCASCADE. So model designers don't need to export STL model files from CAD software, but can drag the STEP file into Bambu Studio directly to open it and slice. This brings about a lot of benefits and the most typical benefits are shown below.
¶ Assembly View
A large 3D model often consists of multiple parts and needs to be split.
Splitting a model into objects help us:
- Be able to print a model whose dimension exceds the build volume
- Easy to print
after spliting the model into parts can make it much easier for printing. - Be able to print a colorful model (some parts have different color with other parts) even w/o an AMS
But it also have some drawbacks:
- Difficult to coloring parts because we cannot preview its overall apperance. It also happens when a user want to change colors based on existing 3mf project
- Do not know the position of each part in the final model.
Assembly View solves these pain points.
When importing the model by STEP file, Bambu Studio will automatically creates its Assembly View, which remembers the relative position of each part.
If the model is split into multiple objects in Bambu Studio, its Assembly View will not change. You can switch to/from Assembly View for different operations. For example, you may switch to Assembly View for an easy colorizing.
You can also explode the model as you wish to easily colorize the inernal parts(if needed) and view the position of each part.
¶ More Arc Movement in G-code
3D models are mostly expressed as triangular mesh, which means that the final slicing and printing path are dense line segments. When the printer is slow, these dense paths have no obvious bad influence on print quality. But when printing speed is high, A lot of transient impulse signals will be produced at the turning point of the segment, which brings about noise and vibration. In order to alleviate this problem, Bambu Slicer generates an arc path by fitting within a certain acceptable tolerance. This can reduce the number of the turning points of segments and make the path more smooth, and reduce the vibration in a fast print. More videos and comparisons can be found in high-speed-print-at-quality
Different from models expressed as triangular mesh, the STEP file saves models without accuracy loss. When importing the STEP file, Bambu Studio converts models into triangular mesh automatically according to a tolerance that is small than the half of default arc fitting tolerance. Therefore, more outline details of the model can be reserved, so that more G2/G3 arc move G-code can be generated when slicing.