I export many floating parts from my CAD to a STL; how to auto-arrange on bed?

Hi guys I want to ask if this is possible and how to do it. I am working on several large-ish projects and am able to export all to-be-printed components all a once in one STL file. They are floating in mid-air wherever their position was in the original file. I am doing this several times a day sometimes, other times several times a week as I don't want to save each object whenever I make modifications in the large CAD.

I would need a way to take this large STL file, import it in a slicer, tell it to split it in parts, tell it to put all objects on the bed, it will ask me then which faces from each object are to be rotated to be laying on the bed, and then it will optimize the layout on the bed so that I can print most effectively all the parts in as many pints as possible.

I know some of these features are already there (splitting the one large object), others are more manual (rotating each object after the split), positioning it on the bed, and others might not exist at all (an algorithm to nest all objects on the bed in the most efficient manner).

Is this something that is considered in the development of slic3r or has anyone had this need before, maybe already did some research that i have missed...

Thank you.

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It's usually a LOT easier to position things in CAD than in the slicer. If you don't want to mess up the part positions in the CAD file, make copies (maybe on a different layer) and put all the copies on the same Z level (and proper rotation), and turn off the original layers before exporting the STL file. That's what I usually do, but I typically process only a few parts at a time.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Yes I finally did that, not positioned them in CAD on a flat surface (that job es easier done by the slicer itself) but just made a copy at component level, so when I rotate them in place (having the right face pointing down) their siblings wouldn't be affected while still having the ability to update the original geometry so that the copy follows.

Than I just export STL and in the slicer i split and arrange. It places all split parts on the bed, as good as it can. Not as good as possible but good enough. I wish some slicer would pick up a nesting open source app and integrate it. Or use some of their algorithms.

Anyway the above seems to work pretty well so far.

Thanks.

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RepRap Lander concept on Concept Forge
RepRap Lander concept on RepRap Forums
My Things, mostly experimental stuff