Create Mod Schematics: Schematicannon, Uploads and Servers

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How Create mod schematics work: save a build with the Schematic and Quill, write it at the table, build it with the Schematicannon and raise the server limits.

Snowy Minecraft mountain slope lined with spruce trees

You want a Create build from one world in another, or a download on your server, and Create hands you a quill, a table and a cannon that eats gunpowder. This guide follows one schematic from saving to building, then covers where to find Create mod schematics and the server settings that limit uploads. We checked it on 31 October 2026 against Create's source code and official wiki for Create 6.0.10 on Minecraft 1.21.1 (NeoForge), the newest release that day; the server settings are the same in 6.0.8 for 1.20.1.

Quick answer: Create mod schematics are .nbt files in the schematics folder of your game folder. Save a build with the Schematic and Quill (right-click two corners, right-click again, name it), write the file onto an Empty Schematic at the Schematic Table, right-click the ground to place the hologram, then put the Schematic in a Schematicannon with gunpowder in its slot and chests of blocks against it, and press Play. One gunpowder covers 400 blocks. Downloads from createmod.com or anywhere else go into the same folder, as long as they are .nbt files. On a server, Create accepts files up to 256 KB and keeps 10 uploads per player by default, set in the [schematics] section of create-server.toml.

The Four Items and Their Recipes

ItemRecipeWhat it does
Empty SchematicPaper and light blue dye, shapelessThe blank item the table writes onto
Schematic and QuillEmpty Schematic and a feather, shapelessSaves an area of your world as a .nbt file
Schematic TableThree wooden slabs on top, two smooth stone below in the middle columnUploads a file and writes it onto an Empty Schematic
SchematicannonIron block on top; log, iron block, log in the middle; smooth stone, dispenser, smooth stone at the bottomBuilds a placed schematic with blocks from the inventories around it

Save a Build With the Schematic and Quill

  1. Hold the Schematic and Quill in your main hand and right-click one corner of the build, then the opposite corner. To pick a point in the air, hold Ctrl: the corner then sits at a fixed distance in front of you, and Ctrl + scroll changes that distance.
  2. Point at a side of the blue box, hold Ctrl and scroll to push that side in or out until the box fits the build. The size shows above your hotbar, for example Schematic Size: 12x8x15.
  3. Right-click again. Type a name of up to 35 characters and press Enter or the Save button.

Sneak and right-click at any point to clear the selection. The file goes into the schematics folder of your game folder: .minecraft/schematics with the default launcher, or the same folder inside the instance if your launcher uses instances.

The name screen also has a Save and Upload Immediately button: it saves the file and turns the Schematic and Quill in your hand into a written Schematic of that area, so you skip the table when you copy a build within the same world or server.

Write It Onto a Schematic at the Schematic Table

Open the Schematic Table and put an Empty Schematic in the left slot (an old Schematic works too). Scroll over the name field to choose a file, then click the check mark. A bar fills while the file uploads, and the written Schematic appears in the right slot.

The table lists only .nbt files that sit directly in your schematics folder, not in subfolders. It reads the folder each time you open it; if you copy a file in while the table is open, click Refresh Files. Open Folder takes you to the folder.

The table actually uploads the file to the server, which keeps its own copy in schematics/uploaded/<your name>/. Your game sends it in pieces of 1,024 bytes, one piece about every half second, so a 100 KB file takes about a minute with the default settings. You can close the table and come back while it runs.

Place the Hologram

Hold the written Schematic and right-click the ground: a hologram of the build appears, centered on the block you aimed at. Hold Ctrl to place it in the air at a fixed distance, and use Ctrl + scroll to change the distance.

For exact coordinates, sneak and right-click with the Schematic. That screen has X, Y and Z, a rotation (none, or 90, 180 or 270 degrees clockwise) and a mirror (front to back or left to right). If you copied x,y,z to your clipboard, Ctrl + V fills in all three.

To adjust, hold Left Alt and scroll to choose a tool, let go of Alt, then point at the hologram, hold Ctrl and scroll:

  • Move XZ shifts the build sideways, Move Y up or down.
  • Rotate turns it by 90 degrees, Mirror flips it along the side you point at.
  • Position places it again with a right-click.
  • Print appears only in creative mode and places the real blocks at once with a right-click.

The hologram is a preview that only you can see. Your game draws it from the file in your own schematics folder, so a Schematic that another player wrote shows no hologram for you unless you have the same file. A Schematicannon still builds it, because the cannon reads the server's copy.

Build It With the Schematicannon

  1. Place the cannon near the build but outside the hologram. Create stops with Target too far away when the schematic's anchor point is 256 blocks or more from the cannon, and pauses with Target is not loaded when part of the area is not loaded, so stay nearby while it works.
  2. Put chests, barrels or other inventories against any of its six sides and fill them with the blocks.
  3. Open the cannon. Put the placed Schematic in the top left slot and gunpowder in the bottom slot. One gunpowder covers 400 blocks, and when the slot runs empty the cannon takes gunpowder from an attached chest.
  4. For a shopping list, put a Book or a Clipboard in the top right slot. The cannon prints a checklist of the blocks the build needs. Put the written book back in to update it.
  5. Click Play.

You do not need every block before you start. When the next block is missing, the cannon pauses with Missing Item and carries on as soon as that block turns up in an attached inventory. When the build is finished, the Schematic is used up and an Empty Schematic comes out, ready to be written again.

Speed: with the default config the cannon fires one block every 11 game ticks, just under two blocks a second on a server running at 20 ticks per second. A build of 1,000 blocks takes about nine minutes. Positions that already match or need nothing are skipped without that wait.

Click Show Printer Settings to choose how the cannon treats what is already there:

SettingWhat the cannon does
Don't Replace Solid BlocksNever replaces solid blocks in its area, only air and non-solid blocks
Replace Solid with SolidReplaces a solid block only where the schematic has a solid block
Replace Solid with Any (default)Replaces solid blocks wherever the schematic has any block
Replace Solid with EmptyClears everything in the area, also where the schematic has air
Skip missing Blocks (off by default)Moves on to the next position instead of waiting for a missing block
Protect Block Entities (on by default)Leaves chests, furnaces and other blocks that hold data in place

Blocks the cannon replaces do not drop as items, so a mode that cuts into terrain destroys that terrain. A Creative Crate next to the cannon supplies every block and needs no gunpowder.

Other messages: Schematic not Positioned means you must place the Schematic with a right-click first. Out of Gunpowder: add gunpowder, and click Play if the cannon does not carry on by itself. Incompatible Blocks with Check Server Logs: the server could not load the schematic, and its log says why.

Where to Find Create Schematics: createmod.com and Litematica Files

Create reads one format: Minecraft's own structure format, a compressed .nbt file, the kind a structure block also saves. Any such file works, wherever it comes from. The table lists only files that end in .nbt, and one that is not compressed gets a message that it is "either corrupt or encoded wrongly".

Many players start at createmod.com. Its schematic files are .nbt files (its robots.txt describes them that way, checked 31 October 2026), so a download goes straight into your schematics folder. Before you download, check which Minecraft version, Create version and addons the build was made with: blocks from an addon your world does not have cannot come out right. Do not confuse the site with createmod.net, the home of Create's official wiki.

A .litematic file does not load in Create. Convert it with Litematica, which runs on Fabric, in a separate instance of the same Minecraft version:

  1. Copy the .litematic into that instance's schematics folder, press M and click Schematic Manager.
  2. Select the file and click the type button next to Export as: until it shows Vanilla Structure.
  3. Click Export as: and save the file.
  4. Copy the new .nbt into the schematics folder of your Create instance.

A .schem or .schematic file takes one step more: select it in the Schematic Manager, click Import to save it as a .litematic, then export that. Our Litematica setup guide covers the install.

Create Schematics on a Server: the Settings

Everything a server owner can tune sits in the [schematics] section of create-server.toml, Create's server config, with the same names and defaults in 6.0.10 and 6.0.8.

SettingDefaultWhat it does
maxTotalSchematicSize256Largest file a player may upload, in KB. Despite the name, it is checked per file
maxSchematics10Uploads kept per player. The next upload deletes that player's oldest file
maxSchematicPacketSize1024Size in bytes of the pieces an upload is split into (256 to 32767)
schematicIdleTimeout600Ticks without new data before the server drops an unfinished upload
creativePrintIncludesAirfalseWhether creative Print also clears blocks where the schematic has air
schematicannonDelay10Ticks between cannon shots, in [schematics.schematicannon]. Lower is faster
schematicannonShotsPerGunpowder400Blocks per gunpowder, in [schematics.schematicannon]

Where the file is:

  • NeoForge 1.21.1: config/create-server.toml. If world/serverconfig/create-server.toml exists, that copy overrides it for that world, so edit that one.
  • Forge 1.20.1: world/serverconfig/create-server.toml, created the first time the server starts with that world.

Stop the server, change the numbers on the lines that are already there, and start it again. The server sends the values to players when they join, so their uploads follow your limits. A build server where people share big schematics could use:

[schematics]
	maxSchematics = 30
	maxTotalSchematicSize = 1024
	maxSchematicPacketSize = 8192

With 8,192 byte pieces, a 1 MB file takes about a minute to upload instead of about nine.

The schematics/uploaded folder sits in the server's main folder, next to mods and config, not inside the world. Copy it along when you move the server or restore a world: without it, every placed Schematic that points to a missing file stops with Schematic File Expired. On our Create server hosting plans you reach both the config and that folder in the panel's file manager or over SFTP, and the page lists the sizes we suggest: 4GB for Create with a few addons, 8GB for a Create pack. Our Create server optimization guide covers the contraption limits in the same file.

FAQ

Where do Create schematics go? In the schematics folder of your game folder: .minecraft/schematics with the default launcher, or the same folder inside your launcher instance. On a server, the uploaded copies are in schematics/uploaded/<player name>/.

Why does Create say my schematic exceeds limitations specified by the server? The file is larger than maxTotalSchematicSize, 256 KB by default and checked per file. The next chat line shows the limit. Ask the server owner to raise it in create-server.toml, or save the build as two smaller schematics.

Can I use Litematica schematics with Create? Not directly, because Create only reads .nbt structure files. In Litematica's Schematic Manager, export the .litematic as a Vanilla Structure and put the .nbt in your schematics folder.

How much gunpowder does a Schematicannon need? One gunpowder per 400 blocks with the default config, so a stack of 64 covers 25,600 blocks. With a Creative Crate next to it, the cannon needs none.

What does Schematic File Expired mean? The server no longer has the uploaded file. Each player keeps 10 uploads by default and the next one deletes the oldest, or someone removed files from schematics/uploaded. The cannon hands back an Empty Schematic: write the file onto it again at the table.

Can you place a Create schematic instantly? Only in creative mode: choose Print with Left Alt and scroll, then right-click. In survival the Schematicannon builds it block by block from your chests. Print skips the spots where the schematic has air, unless the server sets creativePrintIncludesAir = true.

Sources

All opened on 31 October 2026: