Sandustry has no blueprint library screen, no blueprint strings to import, and no Workshop blueprint category — searches for those come back empty because the system is simpler: C selects a placed structure, Ctrl+C copies your selection, Ctrl+V stamps it down again. Your saved builds are your blueprints, and this page is about which builds are worth copying. (Hold V for the construction ruler when you need exact distances; Shift while dragging reverses a belt.)
The physics rules every layout obeys
Every good build in this game is an arrangement of five documented facts:
- Density sorts for free. Heavier pixels sink through lighter ones — gold (300) through everything, wet sand (150) below residue (50). See the density table.
- Belts move horizontally, launchers throw, gravity is vertical transport. None of them need power.
- Filters are one-way doors by material — and a filter over a solid block is a trap, the basis of captive-lava burners.
- Machines are selectively permeable: only gold passes a Shaker's body; only gold and amethelis pass a Planter Box.
- The Kinetic Press needs a 25-block fall. Height is a mechanic, not an aesthetic.
The core modules
The shaker staircase. Shakers on a descending diagonal: wet sand sinks and flows down the steps, residue rides off the tops onto a collection belt, gold rains through into a Collector shaft. Scales by adding steps.
The press shaft. A 25+ block vertical drop with a Kinetic Press at the bottom, angled launchers along the press tops to flick stalled material back into the fall. Feed it burnt residue from —
The lava burner. Cinder trapped in a Filter, ignited once into permanent lava; a belt runs the raw residue across it. Fuel-free, power-free, forever (the slag guide has the numbers).
The drop mixer. Amethelis and redsand only react by falling onto each other — belts merging them side-by-side do nothing. So the voidbloom mixer is two hoppers over one shaft, not a junction (details in the fluxite guide).
The seed pool. Hydration pool, Clearing Frame at the waterline, planter row, filter beneath — the planter guide walks through it.
The "mini factory" pattern
The build style YouTube made famous — mini Sandustry factory, no drones, no portals — is not a specific save file; it is a constraint set: everything above, stacked into one screen. The layout logic, top to bottom, follows gravity: hydration and sifting at the top, the residue burn beside the staircase, the press shaft using the factory's full height, planters at the level the seeds land, Collectors at the very bottom where all gold converges. Built this way the factory needs no haulers at all (they cost 3000 gold anyway — see when not to use haulers), which is exactly why the challenge is popular: it is cheaper and faster than the sprawling version.
One warning for compact builds: keep the Flux Emanator out of them. It needs an open cavity for its fluxite ball, and boxing it in is a documented performance killer.
Sharing builds
With copy-paste being save-local, sharing happens through the Steam Workshop — custom maps and mods rather than blueprint strings (the demo era's image-file maps and custom-map loader are covered in the mods guide). If a proper blueprint-export ever ships, it will be in the patch notes on the release-date page the week it happens.