I’ve been using SketchUp for many years. I’m not claiming to be an expert but I am pretty confident in my modeling skills. On the flip side, I’m brand new to 3d printing and looking to learn more. The topic that’s got me stumped at the moment is how to create a multi-color 3d print from a model. Single color model makes sense. Multi-color model broken down into parts to print separately and glue together after makes sense. But is there a way to design a multi-color model in SketchUp and have those colors translate into Bambu Studio to print in multiple colors with an AMS?
You’re going to want to use an OBJ file, but you have to prepare the model just right. When you export, and you get the window for where and what format to export in, select “.obj”, click on “options” and you’ll get a menu like this:
By default, most of these are unchecked. I checked all the ones you see here and was able to successfully import it into Bambu Lab. When I tried the default settings, Bambu kicked back an error message about the file not containing geometry or something along those lines.
Fair warning, though, when I actually sliced the model, the results were a little bit… messy.
I may have to tweak some more settings, and there’s always a user error on my part, but it may be easier just to paint it in the slicer directly rather than dealing with these other file formats.
Usually, I do not assign textures in SketchUp. I export each part of the model as a component to the slicer as an .stl, using color to select the pieces. All components are tagged individually. Assign the filament color in the slicer. Bambu has an excellent wiki for a guide.