How Blueprints Work in Sandustry: Copy, Save, Share

Sandustry blueprints work through the game's own copy-paste system: press C to enter select mode, mark the factory section you want, press Ctrl+C to copy it, then open the Blueprint section of the building tab and click the save icon on the most recent Clipboard History entry to store it as a named, reusable blueprint. Saved blueprints can be exported as a shareable text string and imported by any other player, which is how the community trades everything from single Shakers to 300,000-character megafactories. This guide covers the full workflow, the import and export rules, and how to organize shared designs by use case.

Saving a working module

The official workflow, documented in the pinned Sandustry FAQ on Steam, has four steps. Press C (the default keybind) to enter select mode and mark the structure you want to turn into a blueprint. Copy it with Ctrl+C; you can also paste the current selection directly with Ctrl+V. Then go to the Building tab, select Blueprint, and hit the save icon, the floppy disk, on the most recent item in Clipboard History, and name it whatever you like.

The save icon is the step that trips players up, so it deserves emphasis: the Blueprint menu keeps a history of everything you have copied, and saving is a separate action on that history list, not part of the copy itself. If you cannot find the save button, look for the small icon directly beside the most recent Clipboard History entry. Several Steam threads exist purely because players copied a structure and never realized the second click existed.

Keep blueprints focused on one production or logistics task. A compact, tested module is easier to place, inspect, and adapt than a giant snapshot of an unfinished factory. The dependable habit is to prototype with ordinary copy and paste, and only save a blueprint after the module has actually run.

Exporting and importing blueprint strings

A tileable example of the kind of layout you can capture as a Blueprint and reuse across saves.

Every saved blueprint can leave your save file as text. In the Blueprints menu, click Export and the game generates a string that can be copied and pasted anywhere: a Discord message, a forum post, a guide. To bring a shared design in, click Import in the same menu and paste the blueprint string into the box that pops up. Once confirmed, the design appears in your library for selection and placement.

Two practical rules govern strings. First, never paste a shared string directly into the world; always go through the Import dialog so the game parses it into a proper blueprint. Second, remember that strings describe structures, not your tech tree: many shared designs list the research they assume, and placing a blueprint does not unlock anything.

There is no official public catalogue of strings, and nothing guarantees a shared string stays compatible across game versions during Early Access. Community blueprint sites fill that gap, and string sizes there range from under 300 characters for a single steam-engine cell to over 300,000 characters for a full-chain megafactory.

Flip, replace, and other placement tricks

Copied and selected structures can be mirrored before placement. The default keybind is Ctrl+H, which flips the selection so a module built to feed from the left can be made to feed from the right. This matters more than it sounds in a game where launcher throw direction and conveyor drag direction define your layout, and it is the fastest way to fit a borrowed design into terrain it was not drawn for.

The broader building shortcuts interact well with blueprints. The replace function lets you exchange structures inside an existing layout without dismantling it, which is how you upgrade a working line to Mark 2 belts and launchers. Copy and paste (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V on a selected area) handles repetition, while saved blueprints handle reuse across sessions. If you are still building your first modules worth saving, the getting started guide covers the core gold line those modules will automate.

Validate before you scale

A blueprint preserves a layout; it does not prove that the surrounding factory can feed it. Place an imported design in an open test area first, then check orientation, inputs, outputs, and clearance before connecting it to the main factory. Imported modules assume specific logistics, so test with the resources they expect and inspect for blocked conveyors, wrong pipe levels, and outputs with nowhere to go.

Check what a design assumes before you import it at all. Community descriptions state their requirements plainly: one single-cell steam engine requires the snow machine unlock, a high-throughput sand washer requires advanced filters and logic gates, and a full Florinol line requires unlocks up to Tier 5's Snowmaker. A blueprint that looks broken in your save may simply be arriving a few research tiers early.

The practical value of blueprints is repeatability, not quantity. Keep modules that solve a problem you have verified, edit the final section when your terrain differs, and avoid saving every temporary experiment. Tileable designs, modules meant to repeat side by side, are the ones most worth saving because one verified cell multiplies into an array.

Community blueprints by use case

The community's shared library covers a few recognizable categories, and the use case tells you what to check before importing. Our library pages will carry strings for these categories as verified community layouts are published.

• Gold lines: early-game Shaker modules and tileable plinko shakers that turn Wet Sand into Gold plus residue, typically requiring only Filters and Logistics 1. Pair them with the Kinetic Press chain for the second payout.
• Water and wetting: simple sand and seed wetters, seed washers with overflow protection, and high-throughput sand washers with automatic and manual shutoffs. These feed both the gold line and the Planter Box farm.
• Flowers and planters: escape-free flower burners and tileable plant burners that grow and harvest flowers in one enclosed module, some integrated with lava basins for heat.
• Steam and energy: single-cell steam engines a few hundred characters long, larger steam engines with shutoffs, and endless-energy factories combining Lumling water, lava, and copper molds into energy bricks. See also our steam location guide.
• Lava and smelting: lava-powered smelters for gold or copper, with adjacent buffer boxes serving as fuel storage, plus the freeze-mine-reignite cycle for bringing lava home covered in moving lava.
• Megafactories: numbered multi-piece sets that bolt together into a full sand-to-Florinol chain, with red overlap tiles marking where sections join. These are the largest strings shared, and the hardest to retrofit into existing terrain.

Descriptions on sharing sites also record how many players copied each design, which is a rough quality signal. Fix notes in a description, such as a v1.1 that restored missing fans and belts, are worth reading before you trust an upload.

Third-party blueprint tools

A community developer has published an open blueprint toolkit that includes an encoder, a decoder, and an inspector that renders blueprint strings as images. It is useful for previewing a string before importing it and for checking what a shared design actually contains. The tool's author notes some features are limited by what the game currently exposes, so treat it as a viewer rather than an editor.

Sources and version notes

This guide reflects Early Access v0.5.x as of August 2026 (v0.5.5, Update #2, August 19). The save workflow, Clipboard History behavior, import/export strings, and Ctrl+H flip all come from the official pinned Sandustry FAQ on Steam and matching developer-pinned resources. The community blueprint categories, unlock requirements, and string sizes are drawn from a player-run blueprint sharing site and are player reports, not independently verified; copy counts and required unlocks there can lag behind game updates. One community tutorial describes the import path with an extra menu key that the official FAQ does not mention, so follow the official Blueprints-menu path if your build differs. No example blueprint strings are reproduced here; the library grows as verified community layouts are published.