3D printers are widely used to verify the designs in the early stage of product development, and are required to have short build time. However, the build time is still too long for a quick design review for engineers. This research focuses on how to split the prototype in order to reduce the build time and improve surface roughness. In order to verify the feasibility of prototype splitting, the build time and the roughness have been experimentally measured for various parts and build orientations. Based on the experimental results an expert system was developed for splitting the original CAD mod el by using an efficient splitting method. It can recommend a splitting plane based on build time, surface roughness and the number of divided parts. It is shown that the model splitting reduces the build time significantly and improves surface quality wit bout rough surfaces where the support was removed.