Grouping parts

Grouping tells Funnel to keep certain parts together, so that they are all printed in the same print job. It is useful when parts belong to the same case and you want them to come off the printer together.

Funnel can group parts for you automatically, or you can group them yourself.

Before you start

Parts can only be grouped if:

• they all use the same template
• they all fit on a single build platform
• they have not yet been accepted.

Two things are worth knowing before you begin:

• Grouped parts are placed a little less efficiently. Funnel has less freedom when it arranges the build platform, so a job holding grouped parts job may hold slightly fewer parts than a job with no grouped parts.
• A priority part makes the whole group a priority. If you mark any part in a group as a priority part, Funnel treats the entire group as a priority.

You can group parts in two ways:

• Automatically, by matching part of the file name.
• Manually, by selecting parts in the Inbox and clicking Create Part Group. Manual grouping needs parts that have not been accepted yet, so Auto accept parts must be turned off. It is off unless someone in your organisation has turned it on.

Warning: With either method you can build a group too large to fit the build platform of any printer. See When a group does not fit a print job below for how to recover.

Automatic grouping

Automatic grouping matches part of the file name: parts whose names share the same block of characters are grouped together. The rule applies to every part uploaded by your organisation.

Turning automatic grouping on or off

You need the Admin or Owner role.

1. Click Manage.
2. Select the Rules tab. The current Auto grouping state is shown there.
3. Click Edit to open the Auto grouping dialogue.

The Auto grouping dialogue

The switch at the top turns automatic grouping on and off. Below it, three settings describe where in the file name Funnel should look:

• Character Position — which end of the name to count from, the start or the end, and the direction of the count.
  • From start count, to the right, from the first character of the string to find the starting character,
  • From End count, to the left, from the last character, before the file suffix, to find the starting character.
• Starting character position — How many characters away from the start or end (depending on Character Position) of the file-name to start matching.
• Character range — number of characters that must be identical across files, to match for auto-grouping, starting at Starting character position

The file extension is ignored when the rule is applied.

Click Save to keep your changes, or Cancel to discard them.

Two examples show how the settings work in practice.

Example: the identifier is at the end of the name

Here the software that produced the part files puts the case number at the end, and anything may come before it — for example xyz_case035.stl .

These parts would be grouped together:

xyz_case035.stl p_case035.stl molarcap_case035.stl 

Example: the identifier is in the middle of the name

Here the identifier follows a date — for example 20261005_0234_model.stl , where 0234 identifies the case.

These parts would be grouped together:

20261005_0234_model.stl 20261005_0234_surgical_guide.stl 

Manual grouping

Manual grouping works on parts that have not been accepted yet, so Auto accept parts must be turned off. That is how Funnel arrives, so unless someone in your organisation has turned it on, there is nothing to change.

Creating a group

1. Go to the Inbox and open the To Review tab.
2. Select the parts you want to group.
3. Click Create Part Group.

The button only becomes available once the parts you have selected can actually be grouped — that is, when they all use the same template. If you select parts that use different templates, the button stays unavailable until you change your selection.

Renaming a group

Funnel gives every new group a name. To use your own instead, select the group and click Rename, then type the new name in the dialogue that opens.

Adding parts to a group

You can only add parts to a group before the group has been accepted.

1. Select the part or parts you want to add.
2. Select the group you want to add them to.
3. Click Regroup in the action bar.

Regroup is only available when the parts you have selected use the same template as the group.

Removing a part from a group

If a part has ended up in the wrong group, select it inside the group and click Remove from Group.

Accepting a group

Accepting a group accepts every part in it.

1. Go to the Inbox and open the To Review tab.
2. Select the group you want to accept.
3. Click Accept. You can also use the Accept button in the details panel if you prefer.

The group moves to the Accepted tab.

From there Funnel treats the group much as it treats a single part: it looks for a print job the group will fit. The group first appears in a provisional job, like this:

When the provisional job is promoted to a print job, it appears like this:

When a group does not fit a print job

A group can end up too large for any printer its template allows. When that happens Funnel moves the group back to the To Review tab of the Inbox and adds a callout to the Inbox icon in the navigation panel to tell you something needs attention.

You have two ways to fix it: take some parts out of the group, or break the group up altogether.

Taking parts out of the group

Remove parts as described in Removing a part from a group above.

Funnel can only discover that a group is too big after it has tried to place it, and by that point the parts have already been accepted. So both the parts you remove and the group they came from go straight back into the queue to be placed in a print job, and Funnel processes them immediately. There is no chance to group the removed parts differently first.

The group may still be too large even without the parts you removed. If so, remove more.

Breaking the group up

Select the group and click Ungroup. The group is dissolved and all of its parts go back into the queue to be placed in print jobs. There is no chance to regroup them into smaller groups first.