Cuts and slicing

Most architectural models are bigger than a 3D printer's build plate. AnansiBuild can slice your model horizontally into pieces — typically floor by floor — so each piece prints separately and you assemble the result on a table.

When to slice

Slice your model when:

• It doesn't fit on the bed. The fit indicator next to each scale in the Preview Window tells you whether the whole model fits on your selected printer. Red means it doesn't.
• You want to print over multiple sessions. A 5-story building printed as one piece is a multi-day print. Sliced floor-by-floor, each floor is an overnight print and you can reprint individual floors if one fails.
• You want to show interiors. Cutting at floor levels exposes the floor plan of each story — useful for plan-view photography or for showing a client what a single floor looks like inside.
• You need to ship or transport the model. Many smaller pieces beat one tall fragile piece.

How AnansiBuild slices

AnansiBuild currently does horizontal slicing only — every cut is a flat plane parallel to the ground. (Earlier builds had X/Y vertical cuts; that path was removed in v1.0 due to performance and reliability problems. Vertical and angled cuts are on the long-term roadmap; for now, use Bambu Studio's native Cut tool for vertical splits after you import the 3MF.)

You add cuts in the Cuts card on the right panel of the Preview Window. There are two ways to add a horizontal cut:

Level cuts

Click + Level to pick from the levels defined in your Revit project. AnansiBuild reads your levels and adds a cut at each one you select. This is usually what you want — the model gets sliced exactly along your floor lines.

Manual cuts

Click + Manual to enter an exact elevation in feet (Revit's project units — the input field has a literal ft label next to it). Use this when:

• You want a cut that doesn't line up with a Revit level (e.g. mid-story, just above a parapet, between a podium and a tower).
• Your project doesn't have well-defined levels.
• You want to test different cut heights without editing the Revit model.

Live preview and explode slider

Once you add cuts, the viewport updates live to show each piece. An Explode panel appears at the bottom of the Cuts card only when at least one cut is configured — if you remove all cuts, the panel collapses again. With pieces present, you can:

• Inspect each piece by orbiting around the model.
• Spread the pieces apart with the Explode slider in that panel. Drag from 0 mm (pieces stacked normally) up to 100 mm (pieces lifted apart so you can see between them). This is preview-only — it doesn't affect the exported file.
• Toggle categories on a per-piece basis through the Categories card. Walking through the piece list with categories off is a fast way to spot geometry that crosses a cut plane.

If a cut produces a piece that doesn't fit on the bed, the fit indicator flags it. Either move the cut, add another cut to subdivide further, or shrink the scale.

What ends up on disk

This is where sliced exports differ most from unsliced ones, so it's worth being precise.

When you export with cuts active, AnansiBuild writes one .3mf file per piece — not a single 3MF with multiple objects inside. Each file is a complete, standalone 3MF with its own categories, materials, and AMS slot assignments. They land together in the folder you chose at Save time.

File naming. Each piece file is named {ProjectName}_{PieceName}.3mf, with spaces replaced by underscores. So a 3-story project named "Wright House" produces:

Wright_House_Ground_Floor.3mf
Wright_House_Floor_2.3mf
Wright_House_Floor_3.3mf

Piece naming is sequential, not level-based. Pieces are named by their order from bottom to top: Ground Floor, Floor 2, Floor 3, and so on. This is true regardless of whether you used + Level or + Manual cuts — the piece names don't echo your Revit level names. (If your Revit project has levels named "Lobby", "Mezzanine", "Office", they still come out Ground Floor, Floor 2, Floor 3 in the export.)

Inside each file, the building categories are kept as separate sub-objects (Walls, Floors, Roofs, Glass, Frames, etc.) so multi-color filament assignment works the same way it does for an unsliced export. The AMS slot mapping is consistent across pieces — Walls in GroundFloor.3mf map to the same filament slot as Walls in Floor2.3mf. You set up filament slot ↔ filament once in Bambu Studio and the assignment carries across all the piece files.

Bed packing. Some pieces might be too big for a single print plate, or a single plate might fit several smaller pieces. AnansiBuild calculates how many physical print plates you'll need to run the full job and reports it in the Export Summary as Beds: N. A 5-piece sliced export might pack onto 2 beds (3 small pieces on one bed + 2 large pieces on a second bed) or might need 5 beds if every piece is bed-filling. Plan your print sessions accordingly.

On joints / connectors. AnansiBuild's slicer has an internal JointMode configuration, but joinery generation is currently shelved — every cut is a flat plane, and JointMode is held at None. Dovetail / pin / interlock generation is on the long-term roadmap. For now, use Bambu Studio's native Cut tool with connectors after import (see below) or drill matching holes for steel pins post-print.

Aligning the pieces after printing

Plain horizontal cuts produce flat-on-flat surfaces with no built-in registration. AnansiBuild does not currently generate joints or interlocking features. The two simplest ways to keep pieces aligned during assembly:

• Use Bambu Studio's Cut tool with connectors. After importing the 3MF, you can re-cut a piece and add Bambu's built-in dovetail or pin connectors before slicing. This is the recommended path until AnansiBuild ships joint generation.
• Glue with locating pins. Drill matching holes in mating faces, glue in 2 mm or 3 mm steel pins (or short lengths of filament), and assemble. Crude but effective.

Joint generation inside AnansiBuild is on the roadmap.

Tips for clean slices

• Cut just above floors, not through them. If your level mark sits at the top of the slab, a cut exactly at the level can leave a paper-thin slab on the lower piece. Bumping the cut up by 4–6 inches (in real-world feet — that translates to a few millimeters at typical model scales) gives the floor below a clean ceiling.
• Watch for stairs and railings spanning levels. A stair that runs from Level 1 to Level 2 will be cut by a Level 2 cut. The two halves print fine and glue together, but you'll have a visible seam — plan for it or hide stairs from the export and print them separately.
• MEP and topography across cuts. Long ductwork or a sloping site can produce thin slivers at cut planes. If a piece has a problem area, hide that category for the affected piece during assembly.

What if I don't want to slice?

You don't have to. If your model fits on your printer's bed at the scale you want, leave the Cuts card empty and export normally — you'll get a single-piece 3MF.

Where to next

• Picking a scale that fits without slicing: Printers and scales
• Multi-color setup that works across pieces: Categories and material mapping
• Sliced pieces don't look right: Troubleshooting