Arrange models and use more than one plate

Before you start

You need a printer chosen in the Print block (Your first print) and two or more models on the plate. Each model you import is centred on the plate, so several imported in a row sit on top of one another, which is the plate Arrange is for. Orient each model first (Place and orient): Arrange moves models, it never turns them.

Set the gap

Under the list in Plate contents sits a row of five icons. Array has a Gap field in millimetres, 5 by default, and Arrange uses the same number as the space it leaves between models. Open Array, set Gap, and close it without pressing Lay out, which is a different tool: a grid of copies of one model.

Supports lean outside the model they hold, and Arrange packs the model alone: the Gap is the only room it leaves for them. If you plan to add supports, raise the Gap before you arrange. The app doesn’t check that two support trees stay apart at 5 mm.

Arrange the plate

1. Press the fourth icon, “Arrange the plate”. The same command is Edit, then Arrange plate.
2. Read the status bar: “Arranged 4 models”.

Arrange takes every visible model on the plate in front of you, selected or not. It ignores hidden models (the eye at the start of a row). Models end up at least 2 mm from the plate’s edge, with the packed block centred. Their height doesn’t change.

How the plate is packed

Encrust turns each model’s shadow on the plate into a bitmap of 1 mm cells and tries the biggest model first, as near the front left corner as it fits. The shape is kept, not just the bounding box, so a small part can sit in the bay of a large one. Packing is exact to the cell: expect up to a millimetre lost on each side against a polygon packer.

Two limits come with it. It is first-fit, not optimal: a gap that a smaller model would have filled can stay empty. And a model packs in the rotation it has, so a tall, thin model lying diagonally takes its diagonal footprint. Orienting it first, or standing it upright, can fit more.

When a model “found no room”

If the models don’t all fit, the status bar reads “Arranged the plate; 1 model found no room” (or “3 models”). The ones that fit are placed. The ones that don’t are left exactly where they were, usually on top of another model, so don’t slice yet.

Your options, in the order to try them: lower the Gap, orient the model to a smaller footprint (Place and orient), scale it, cut it, or send it to another plate.

Use more than one plate

The strip under the title holds one tab per plate. The + at its end adds a plate, named “Plate 2” and so on, and makes it the one in front. Double-click a tab’s name to rename it. The minus beside it, “Remove this plate and what is on it”, deletes the plate and its models, and is greyed out while there is only one.

To send a model across, select it, then Edit, Move to plate, and pick the plate. It moves one model at a time (the last one picked) and keeps its position, so press Arrange on the plate it lands on. A plate is only a number on each model: it has no printer or resin of its own, so every plate in a project is cut for the printer and resin in the Print block.

At the right end of the strip, a count tells you what the tools are aimed at: “4 models, 2 selected”.

Slice one plate or all of them

Slice to .goo (or your printer’s format) cuts the plate in front of you. With two or more plates a second button, “Slice all 3 plates”, cuts every plate that has a visible model, one after another. You choose one file name and each plate adds its own name to it, in lowercase with hyphens: bracket-plate-2.goo. Two plates with the same name get their number instead.

What a tool does to the plate or to the selection

Hollowing, supports, relief and the drain check act on the models you’ve picked. With nothing picked, they act on the whole plate. A line under each tool’s button says which, for example “Cuts a cavity inside all 4 models on the plate.” Click a row in Plate contents to pick one; Ctrl, Cmd or Shift adds or removes a model; Ctrl+A (Cmd+A) picks the plate and Escape drops the selection.

Read that line before you press the button. With nothing picked, a button meant for one of four copies runs on all four.

Arrange is the exception: it always takes the whole visible plate.

Many parts, one file each

If you want one file per part rather than one plate of parts, the command line does it: encrust batch models/ slices every model in the folder on its own, writes one file and one report per model, and doesn’t pack them together. Add --center --orient to stand each one in the middle of its plate. To put several models on one plate from the command line, encrust slice a.stl b.stl c.stl --arrange -o plate.goo spreads them, biggest first. The window’s plates are for the other case.

If something goes wrong

Arrange plate is greyed out

In the Edit menu, the item is greyed out when nothing on the plate is visible (the icon in Plate contents answers “Nothing visible on the plate to arrange”). Show a hidden model with the eye on its row, or check that you are on the right tab.

The status bar says “a model on the plate has no footprint to arrange”

Arrange couldn’t measure one model, and nothing moved. Delete that model, or repair the mesh in the program that made it (Check and repair).

Two models still touch after arranging

Check the status bar for “found no room”: that model was left in place. Otherwise supports are the likely cause, since they aren’t counted in the packing. Raise the Gap and arrange again.