How To Use Blueprints In Factorio

Programme the perfect factory with this Factorio blueprints guide

(Image credit: Wube Software)

Looking for a Factorio blueprints guide? When you're building your manufacturing metropolis on Factorio's (opens in new tab) alien planet, things can get messy chop-chop. Many of the game'south assembly lines and processes are so intricately interconnected, that you can easily end up in an infuriating tangle of send belts, pipes, and electrical wiring.

This is where the ingenious Factorio blueprints system comes in. Blueprints let you copy, save, and share the layout of any part of their mill. These plans can and then exist laid over areas of land where you want to build, helping you expand your factory in a precise manner, thereby making it neater, easier to navigate and almost importantly, more efficient.

In short, a good Factorio blueprint will assist bring club to even the nearly chaotic builds. But how exactly do yous create, salvage and share blueprints, and what are the best blueprints to continue tucked away in your library? Time to become back to the drawing board.

How to create, edit and save blueprints in Factorio

To create blueprints in Factorio, you must first switch the game to Blueprint mode (ALT+B). You should see a bluish foursquare appear to the bottom-right of your cursor, indicating Factorio is now in pattern mode.

To create a blueprint, click and elevate over the expanse of your manufacturing plant yous want to be included. When you release the mouse-push button, a menu box should popular up showing an animated picture of the expanse you've selected. Hither, yous tin can give your design a name and clarification, and fiddle with parameters like snapping the blueprint to the grid or choosing an icon to stand for the blueprint in your inventory. You can also edit the pattern, right-clicking on the image to remove whatsoever unwanted objects, such equally sections of ship belt or electricity pylons (left-clicking will also restore any deleted objects).

Once you've finished tinkering with your blueprint, click 'Save Blueprint' and information technology will appear in your inventory, the chosen icon highlighted with a blue background.

If you create a blueprint you plant to employ regularly, consider putting it into your blueprint library. To do this, open the library by pressing the "Blueprint Library" button on the meridian-left of the screen, then click on the design in your inventory and transfer it to the library. Note in that location are 2 menu tabs to choose from. "My blueprints" will store a blueprint and brand it accessible across all singleplayer saves. "Game blueprints" is a library jump to the current salve, used mainly for sharing blueprints in multiplayer.

factorio blueprint library — (Image credit: Wube Software)

How to utilize Factorio blueprints

To deploy a Factorio blueprint, but click on it in your inventory, and then left-click to place it as you would any other object. Note: The blueprint provides an outline of what to build and where, it doesn't practice the bodily construction for you lot. Later in the game yous tin can straight drones to automatically build structures designated by blueprints. Early on, though, you'll have to practice the grunt piece of work yourself. Boo.

With whatever assembly lines or construction layouts that you're going to either add to or utilise multiple incidents of, it's a good idea to blueprint early and then y'all can proceed your construction consistent. Good areas for early blueprinting include:

Your drilling and smelting setups for iron, steel, and copper etc.
Power generators (such as steam engine setups and solar farms).
Certain associates setups, like electronic circuits, which yous demand a lot of, or inserters, which y'all need many of and course a key part of other assembly lines, such equally scientific discipline packs and other types of inserters.

Importing and exporting blueprints

1 of the near of import features of Factorio's blueprints is that they're not restricted to your game. You tin share your blueprints with other players and use their blueprints to improve your ain factory.

Outside of Factorio, blueprints are saved every bit grapheme strings. To export a blueprint, right-click the blueprint and click the 'Consign to string' button. To import a blueprint, observe the cord online, copy it, Then click the 'Import string' push to the right of your hotbar, paste information technology in, then click 'Import'.

factorio science blueprint — (Image credit: Wube Software)

The best Factorio blueprints

While you should certainly have a go at creating your own blueprints, sometimes the best way forward is to learn from others. Here's a selection of the most useful blueprints for Factorio. All of these, forth with many more than, are bachelor at factorioprints.com (opens in new tab):

Base in a book (opens in new tab)
Arguably the ultimate blueprint volume, Nialus' Base-in-a-Book contains all the blueprints used in his accompanying Youtube series, designed to take you from a stranded interstellar explorer to chief of the manufacturing realm.

Tileable Science (opens in new tab)
One of the very best Factorio blueprints, Tileable Sciences gives you a beautifully compact and efficient layout for every science pack in the game.

Excursion Volume (opens in new tab)
This Blueprint volume from ranzolger provides full blueprints for all the circuits you lot'll need to industry across the game.

Power Book (opens in new tab)
Another design book, this one is defended to the wonderful world of power generation. This volume covers blueprints for every kind of ability generating, taking you from steam ability, through solar, all the mode upwardly to creating your own nuclear power plants.