3MF KeyShot to GrabCAD Print – Simplified Workflow

Being able to print full Colour-Material-Finish, multi-material models on J-Series printers from KeyShot makes your design processes easier and faster. Stratasys has reduced the traditional 1-3 week model-making process to one day.

Breaking Through Workflow Barriers

Almost any product designer will tell you that prototyping the shape of a new design with 3D printing is pretty easy. But accurately simulating color, material, and finish, or “CMF,” can take serious time and money. Not anymore. Thanks to the latest KeyShot 10 3D rendering software and Stratasys’ J55 and J8 Series 3D printers, it’s little more than just click and print.

The full-colour, multi-material Stratasys 3D printers and the latest version of KeyShot from Luxion both now support the new 3MF file format, a significant improvement over legacy STL, OBJ, and VRML files. By saving designs to 3MF, KeyShot 10 produces files ready for printing, with accurate colors and bump/displacement maps to three-dimensionally simulate textures like fabric and wood. Additional enhancements are planned for 2021.

Beta Testing

Columbus, Ohio-based Priority Designs was a beta user of the new KeyShot 10 capabilities using the office-friendly J55 3D printer. Erik Fickas, the senior industrial designer, said the speed and simplicity with which they can 3D print a collection of design options is completely new.

Fickas commented:

We developed this Bluetooth speaker model and used KeyShot to add all the textures like the speaker grill, then just saved to the new 3MF file format for 3D printing. Overnight, we had five different models with five different wood samples and different fabric samples. To rapid prototype a wood texture would have been a heck of a lot of work. It’s really incredible what we can do now.

Just Click Print

Stratasys estimates that 3MF support with KeyShot can reduce 3D print modeling time of CMF models to a single day, while traditional modeling for final iterations can take from one to three weeks. The new workflow enables the CMF design phase to start earlier in the design process, helping bring new products to market faster, and also keeps modeling in-house to reduce the risk of intellectual property loss.

Stratasys Vice President of Design, Shamir Shoham commented:

Adding KeyShot support in our PolyJet 3D printers adds an additional advantage compared to designers who are only using 3D printing for concept designs and turning to slower and expensive traditional models for detailed designs.

3MF is an increasingly popular open-source file format published by the 3MF Consortium, of which Stratasys is a leading member. The format improves workflow because it includes all model information in one package, even down to voxel-level control of the interior and metadata of the model. While other 3D printing companies provide support for the 3MF model, Stratasys is the only company providing a PANTONE-Validated™ full color, multi-material 3D printer that can take full advantage of the 3MF format’s capabilities.

In addition to KeyShot, Stratasys also provides 3MF support for a variety of other applications, including leading design software such as Autodesk Fusion 360 and Solidworks.

For further information on KeyShot and its capabilities, get in touch with our team.