RohoSuite
DOCS / ANANSIBUILD

Getting started

Step-by-step first export from a Revit 3D view to a multi-color 3MF file ready for Bambu Studio. Pick scale, printer, categories, and optional floor slicing.

AnansiBuild v1.0

This page walks you through your first export — from open Revit model to a 3MF file you can drop into Bambu Studio.

If you haven't installed yet, head to Installation first.

The 30-second version

  1. Open your Revit model.
  2. Switch to a 3D view.
  3. Click RohoSuite → AnansiBuild → Export 3MF. (In the current beta, the Export 3MF button is text-only — no icon yet.)
  4. The Preview Window opens. Pick a printer, pick a scale, toggle the categories you want.
  5. Click Export, choose where to save, done.
  6. Open the .3mf in Bambu Studio.

That's the whole workflow. Everything below is the longer version.

Before you click Export

A few things make the export go smoother:

  • Be in a 3D view. AnansiBuild only works from a 3D view. If you click Export from a plan or section, it'll politely tell you to switch views.
  • Use a section box if you want to crop. If your 3D view has an active section box, AnansiBuild will respect it — only the geometry inside the box is exported. This is the easiest way to print just one floor, one wing, or one room without having to slice the model after the fact. To work with section boxes:

- In a 3D view, check Section Box in the Properties panel to enable it. - Drag the colored handles in the viewport to resize the box. - Drop into a plan or section view to position the box precisely, then return to 3D and Export. - Toggling the section box off and back on forces Revit to re-emit fresh bounds, useful if AnansiBuild's preview seems stale.

  • Hide what you don't want. Anything hidden in the view is excluded from the export. You can also toggle categories off later inside the Preview Window, so don't worry too much at this stage.

The Preview Window

When you click Export 3MF, AnansiBuild reads your model, organizes it into print-ready categories, and opens a Preview Window with everything in one place.

The window has two halves:

Left side — 3D viewport

A live, color-coded preview of exactly what you're about to export. Each building category gets its own color (walls are gray, glass is translucent blue, doors are wood-colored, etc.). You can:

  • Orbit by left-click + drag
  • Pan by middle-click + drag
  • Zoom with the mouse wheel
  • Frame the model by pressing F

You'll also see three overlays inside the viewport:

  • Category legend (top-left) — a collapsible panel showing each enabled category's color swatch and name. As you toggle categories on and off in the right panel, the legend updates automatically. Click the chevron to collapse it if it's in the way.
  • Bed outline (ground plane) — a faint rectangle showing your selected printer's bed footprint, sized in real viewport millimeters. Reads green when the model fits within the bed, red when it doesn't.
  • ☕ donate button (bottom-right) — a small persistent button linking to Buy Me a Coffee. Always visible while the Preview Window is open. Donations are optional.

Anything you toggle off in the right panel disappears from the viewport immediately, so you can see the result before you commit.

Right side — Export controls

Five cards, top to bottom: Scale → Printer → Model → Cuts → Categories.

Scale — Pick a scale from the dropdown of 19 standard architectural scales, from 3/16" = 1'-0" (largest, most detail) down to 1" = 400'-0" (smallest, site-context studies). Each scale shows the resulting print dimensions and a fit indicator. If you need something specific, type a custom ratio like 1:100 in the Custom box.

Printer — Pick your printer from the dropdown. The list is grouped by manufacturer (Bambu Lab, Prusa, Creality, Snapmaker). Default is the Bambu Lab H2D Dual Nozzle (300 × 320 × 325 mm bed). The card also shows the selected printer's bed footprint as a line of text. Changing the printer updates the bed size, which changes which scales fit.

Model — Two compact stats:

  • Model dimensions in feet (W × D × H)
  • Element / category / triangle counts (e.g. 342 elements, 8 categories, 124,500 triangles)

These update live as you toggle categories or change scale.

Cuts — Where you slice the model into floor-by-floor pieces if it's too big for the bed. Two buttons add cuts: + Level (pick from your Revit levels) and + Manual (type an exact elevation in feet). Active cuts appear as a list below, each with an explode slider for the live preview. See Cuts and slicing for the full picture.

Categories — A tree of every populated category in your model. Each top-level row is a category (with checkbox, color swatch, name, and element count). Expand a category to see the individual Revit families inside it, each with its own count. Three buttons across the top of the card:

  • All — turn everything on
  • None — turn everything off
  • + New — open a small dialog to create a new custom category. Useful when you want to bucket reclassified families separately (see below).

Right-click a family to open a context menu that lets you move it to a different category. This is how you fix mis-routed elements before exporting — for example, moving a custom planter family from Furniture to Site, or splitting a single Revit "Generic Models" bucket across multiple print categories. Combined with + New, you can create your own categorization scheme that overrides the default Revit-category mapping.

Toggle anything off and it disappears from the viewport AND the export.

For the full breakdown of how categories work, see Categories and material mapping.

Exporting

When the preview looks right, click Export. A save dialog appears. The default filename is in the format:

20260502_ProjectName_1-100.3mf

Date first so your File Explorer sorts chronologically. Project name is pulled from your Revit project info. Scale is sanitized for safe filenames.

If you've added cuts to slice the model, you don't get one file — you get one .3mf file per piece, all written into the folder you chose. The file names follow the pattern {ProjectName}GroundFloor.3mf, {ProjectName}Floor2.3mf, {ProjectName}Floor3.3mf, and so on. (Spaces in piece names become underscores.) Each file is a complete 3MF with all the categories you selected — they're separate files, not a single bundle.

Pick a folder, hit Save. A progress bar runs across the bottom of the window. When it finishes, an Export Summary dialog appears.

The Export Summary dialog

The summary is your confirmation that the export ran cleanly, plus quick access to what got produced. It has four sections:

  • Stats card — scale used, total categories exported, solid count, piece count, bed count (how many physical print plates the job needs), total file size, elapsed wall-clock time.
  • Folder card — the output folder path in monospace, with an Open folder button that opens the location in File Explorer.
  • Files card — the list of files that were written (one for unsliced, multiple for sliced), each with its own Open button that launches the file in your default 3MF handler (typically Bambu Studio).
  • Notices card (only appears if there's something to note) — Boolean operation failures, degenerate-geometry warnings, change-log entries from the export pipeline. The export itself proceeded; this is informational.

A small ☕ link in the bottom-left footer appears only on successful exports — peak "you got what you came for" moment.

That's it. Your 3MF (or 3MFs) are ready to open in Bambu Studio.

In Bambu Studio

When you open the 3MF, Bambu Studio shows the model with each category as a separate part in the object list. The colors you saw in the AnansiBuild preview carry over — each category is pre-assigned to an AMS slot, so all you need to do is map the slots to the filaments you have loaded.

For the multi-color theory and recommended filament strategies (two-color, three-color with clear glass, etc.), see Categories and material mapping.

Keyboard shortcuts

While the Preview Window is open:

| Key | Action | |---|---| | Esc | Cancel and close | | F | Zoom to fit | | A | Toggle all categories on | | N | Toggle none (all off) |

Shortcuts are suppressed when you're typing in a text field (like the custom scale box).

What gets remembered

AnansiBuild persists four things between Revit sessions, all in %AppData%\RohoSuite\AnansiBuild\settings.json:

| Setting | What it does | |---|---| | Last printer | The printer dropdown defaults to your last selection. | | Last scale | The scale dropdown pre-selects whatever you used last (or the first scale that fits, if last-used doesn't fit on the current printer). | | Last save folder | The Save dialog opens to wherever you last saved a 3MF. | | Welcome-dialog flag | A small "have you seen the welcome screen yet" flag. The welcome dialog appears the first time you click Export 3MF and never again — that's what this flag controls. |

Per-project category toggles, custom categories, and reassignments are not yet persisted — they reset every time you open the Preview Window. That's on the roadmap.

If you ever want to reset back to defaults, delete settings.json and AnansiBuild will recreate it on next launch.

Where to next