Scanning a build

The Structure Scanner turns any build you’ve made into a reusable blueprint. Crafted from quartz (its “eyes”), glass to focus the lens, and an iron frame, it’s your entry point into the whole print loop.

How to scan

1. Right-click the first corner block of your build.
2. Right-click the opposite corner to set the bounding box.
3. With a Blank Blueprint Disc anywhere in your inventory, right-click the air to capture the scan.

The result is a written Blueprint Disc: portable, tradeable, and printable on any machine of the right tier. Blank discs craft two at a time, and each disc holds exactly one scan.

Scaffolding is free to scan

Scaffolding is how you get to the top corners of a build to set them, so it ends up inside almost every hand-scanned region. The scanner captures it, but the printer treats it as if it weren’t there: it doesn’t add to the print cost, doesn’t raise the blueprint’s tier, and never gets built. Put it up, scan, tear it down, and the disc quotes the building you actually made.

Without that rule a Tier 1 cottage scanned from a scaffold tower comes back as a Tier 3 blueprint, needing a machine the build never called for.

Clear the area first

The printer never overwrites existing blocks: it only fills empty space.

If a position is already occupied, the printer pauses there (its status reads Obstructed) instead of overwriting or skipping it, then resumes automatically once you clear the block out of the way. Clear the print area before starting so the job runs straight through.

Importing existing files

Server operators don’t have to scan everything by hand. You can pull WorldEdit .schem files, Litematica .litematic files, and Create or vanilla .nbt files straight onto discs with /mc3dprint import. From there they behave like any other written disc: print them anywhere a printer can reach.

Once you’ve got a written disc, head to Blueprint Discs & files to learn how tiers and print costs work.