Almost any product designer will tell you that prototyping the shape of a new design with 3D printing is pretty easy. But accurately simulating colour, 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.

US-based product development company, Priority Designs, was a beta user of the new KeyShot 10 capabilities using the recently-launched office-friendly J55 3D printer. Erik Fickas, senior industrial designer, said the speed and simplicity with which they can 3D print a collection of design options is completely new. 
 
“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,” Fickas said. “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 lot of work. It’s really incredible what we can do now.”
 
“The J55 made true full-color, multi-material 3D printing accessible to design studios everywhere, but to fully transform how products are designed, we needed to make the whole workflow simple,” said Stratasys Vice President of Design, Shamir Shoham. “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 colour, 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 SOLIDWORKS.