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I am new to using Blender, and I think I have bitten off more than I can chew. I'm trying to play with a model of the Mark III Iron Man suit. I have broken it down into 8 different groups thanks to how the file was originally saved. The inner arms, inner legs, inner helmet, inner torso, and their outer equivalents. I want to take apart each group to make it more easy to edit and print. So my question is, how do you save each smaller part separately without going one by one? I'm also including a picture of the inner arms to help you understand what I'm talking about.

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  • $\begingroup$ Your question title not exactly reflect the description of your problem, unless I miss something. I am referring the "use in other programs" part. $\endgroup$
    – Sprad001
    Jan 24, 2019 at 12:50

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V2.80 is brilliant with this.

  1. Select the objects in the Outliner
  2. Right Click on one of the highlighted objects in the Viewport, on the left to the list.
  3. When the poupup menu comes up select Move to Collection menu item.

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  1. That will bring up another popup Menu and click on the + New Collection

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  1. Another popup menu will show up, click in the box next to the Name, circled, and type in your new collection name you want.

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  1. In this example named the new collection MyCollection. Click OK button to create it.

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  1. The collection is created and can be collapsed or manipulated making individually visible or hidden with the screen and the camera icons next to them. Or select all the objects in the collection with right clicking on the collection name and selecting from the popup menu Select Objects. See first image selected objects and now included in this newly created collection.

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The same way you can create collections within collections, called nested collections. If you right mouse click on a collection name in the Outliner then from the popup menu you can create a collection with the New menu item and later any selected item can be added to any current collection. In this example adding these 2 additional objects to the MyCollection collection. In this case after step 3 select the desired collection name

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for commenting. I am wondering how putting objects into collections helps to save/export them out of blender. This information helps me organize the objects in blender, and that helps, but I am trying to move them out of blender to use in SolidWorks or Fusion 360. Also, does this work in v2.79 or do I need the beta v 2.80? Thank you again. $\endgroup$ Jan 25, 2019 at 3:25
  • $\begingroup$ That will depend on what format you want to export. Each exporter has its own settings. If you export OBJ then you have the option to set Selection Only, which you need to tick, and you only export the selected objects. The collection will help you select the objects you want to focus on exporting. Note: one objects can belong to multiple Collection. This does not work on any of the V2.7x, it is a new feature to V2.8x $\endgroup$
    – Sprad001
    Jan 25, 2019 at 8:34
  • $\begingroup$ I had found an addon called Rheologic Blender Addon that does what I am trying to do. The addon says you can save multiple objects as separate .STL files all at once. I think this is the feature I am looking for, but I don't see the feature in Blender, and I can't get the addon to work.rheologic.net/en/blender-addon-object-stl-export-separate-files $\endgroup$ Jan 25, 2019 at 20:20
  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately the 'Rheologic STL export' will not work in blender 2.80, until they update their plugin for it. With stl currently you can select for export all selected object if you tick the 'Selection Only' box or the whole scene objects will be exported into one file. I guess currently you need to select the objects and export them as selection only to create the separate files. $\endgroup$
    – Sprad001
    Jan 25, 2019 at 22:15
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for everything. The collections make it easier to play and organize the armor in Blender and will make it easier to save each part one at a time. Hopefully, they can update the plugin sometime in the future. And v2.80 is so much easier to play with for beginners. Thank you again and hopefully, I can make some progress with my project finally. $\endgroup$ Jan 25, 2019 at 22:38
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I just updated / bumped Rheologic's stl export addon to work with blender 3.0.0 (tested on linux). Download and usage instructions here:

https://rheologic.net/articles/blender-object-export-separate-stl/

Basically the addon allows you to export all selected meshes as separate stl files. The file names are the object names with an optional prefix, that can be set in the export dialog.

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