Don't Have a 3D File? Here's How We Design One From Scratch

The most common question we get isn't about materials or turnaround — it's "I don't have a 3D file, can you still help?" The answer is almost always yes. Printing is only the last step of what we do; a good chunk of our work starts before any file exists at all.

From a sketch or an idea

Some projects start as a photo on a phone, a rough pencil sketch, or just a description of what someone's picturing. Our modelling team takes it from there — talking through proportions, function, and any moving or load-bearing parts before a single line gets drawn. The Protea Flower Soap Mold pictured above started exactly this way: a request for a mold with a specific flower's petal structure, not an existing file we adapted.

Reverse-engineering the part you can't buy anymore

A lot of what comes through the studio isn't a new design at all — it's a part that used to exist and doesn't anymore. A discontinued knob, a snapped clip, a bracket the manufacturer stopped making a decade ago. For these, the physical part itself is the source file. Our team measures it, studies how it mounts and interacts with the surrounding assembly, and rebuilds it as a proper model rather than a rough copy. We cover this side of things in more depth in our replacement parts guide.

Cleaning up a file that isn't quite print-ready

Sometimes there's already a file — just not one that will actually print well. Non-manifold geometry, walls too thin to hold their shape, no clearance for supports, or a mesh exported from a scanning app that's technically a shape but not a printable one. Rather than sending it back with a list of problems, we repair, hollow, and optimise it ourselves so it comes out the other side as a real, reliable print.

Bring us whatever you've got

A photo, a sketch, a broken part, or a file that's given you trouble elsewhere — any of it is a fine starting point. Send it to us on WhatsApp and we'll tell you honestly what it'll take to turn into a finished piece, or take a look at the full range of work we've designed and printed from scratch.