Vertical vs Horizontal shapes printing

Question

first time here.

I recently bought an Anycubic Mega S and I'm venturing in the 3D world. Lots to learn for sure. I have printed a few items so far and all went pretty well.

My question is about something that caught my attention while browsing on Thingiverse. I was looking for an organizer for a board game that I have and every option I found there shows the piece in a vertical position rather than horizontal which seems like the natural position of the piece.

I would like to know why most of this types of pieces are set to be printed in a vertical position rather than horizontal.

Here is the original piece Betrayal at Baldur's Gate Organizer by Jason Patch. As you can see in the image below the piece is naturally horizontal but the actual files to print (blue ones) are all vertical.

PS.: I didn't really know which tags to use so I just added 3D, feel free to suggest any other I will happily edit it. :)

Answer 1

Thingieverse does respect the orientation an item was designed in, just like most slicers will. Designers will often choose any one of the three planes (XY, YZ, ZX) as their first by preference, then work out the other parts in relation to the first. This does often not take into account the actual print orientation it should be printed in.

In the case of this box, you'd have to turn all items around the Y-axis (the front-left to back-right one) by 90°, first to the front, then the back then to the front again, getting almost 0 overhangs.

Answer 2

When I design parts in CAD software I pick a starting plane and go from there. And that starting plane doesn't correspond to how the part is designed to be printed. That usually comes later.