Why don't you use Cura slicer?
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I haven't played with Cura 3.1 yet - because their issue tracker is just filled with bugs in the latest release cycle…
And now 3.2beta is available so the issue tracker is going to get more work.
It's great to get new features but if it comes at the expense of stability and compatibility with older versions then something is wrong. I have had my little rant over on the Cura forum suggesting they use a different release strategy with support for long term releases but it made no difference.
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I've only used Cura 3.1, (appimage on Linux) and it's a relatively sane UI, for importing, scaling, positioning etc.
But the interlocking mess of Options, visible options, hidden options, Options that come and go according to other options (but only if you have also made them visible in a pop up modal dialog that hides the options list you are manipulating). There are options changed by changing printer, Options changed by filament settings, lists of proprietary filaments that I will never use but are forced into the UI. Then add in little icons to show which setting you have changed, which are shared. Throw in some help popups that dont always explain things well to a novice,and the somewhat confusing 'keep/drop' settings dialogs as you change profiles, and it's a a bit of a 'mare.
I live on tenderhooks when slicing in Cura and moving between printers and materials, I waste lots of time simply going through the slicing options making sure everything is what I expect it to be and nothing has accidentally changed. I have found myself making whole long lists of options visible just to check that Cura has made sane choices.
For my new printer I have started working by taking my standard calibration model and refining it in Cura till it printed perfectly in PLA+, then saving that as a .3mf, I then repeated for PLA, some high printing temp PLA and PETG.
- I load the CaliCat project for the material, clear the buildplate, import whatever I want to print, then maybe adjust layer height and speed. I find this much more predictable than hoping my profile selections will magically generate the right settings.
There are still some frustrations with my 4K'ish screen; scaling is good, but selection boxes on screen elements are tiny, it is particularly hard to select the layer view slider, for instance. The GUI also bogs down on the layer view for big models, further complicating navigation, but that's not too surprising given my gpu/screen combo, this is no gaming rig.
Finally; I was having wall holes appear in some 0% infill (low poly) models when sliced, clearly visible in the layer view. None of the mesh options, or any others would resolve it; and with my enthusiasm for mesh editing at an all-time low I simply resorted to Slic3r as a workaround. It sliced the same (mildly defective, I'm sure) STL's fine, and gave me the gcode I needed.
- Slic3r's options might be another dogs-dinner of tabs, dropdowns and scrollbars, but at least I can see them all at a glance.
- That was a couple of weeks ago, and since then I've found myself using slic3r more; the advantage Cura has over it for me seems to be 'undo', speed for some models, and the Vase mode (which Slic3r doesn't really understand how to do properly)
I seem to have rambled there.. sorry for that.
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… because my personal version of Cura has separate speeds for the first layer walls and everything else.
There is an option to slow down the whole first layer, I use it a lot, are you talking about just slowing down the first walls, but leaving the fill of the base printing fast?
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A Cura plugin for controlling a Duet with RepRapFirmware.
Thanks to resam for this, thread is here:
https://www.duet3d.com/forum/thread.php?pid=27676#p27676I tried installing that, but I couldn't get it to appear in the plugins/extensions list. I recently updated Cura to 3.1.0, so maybe this hasn't caught up?
I have noticed that slightly different versions of Cura seem to put the plugins in slightly different places. I don't have a good map. If you install any plugin and it does not appear, check if there are plugins in the "local" vs "roaming" user\appdata directories. Or vice versa.
Also look for 3.0, 3.1, etc. as directory names. You get the idea…
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Love to use Cura but there are too many settings or the useful ones are hidden away
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… because my personal version of Cura has separate speeds for the first layer walls and everything else.
There is an option to slow down the whole first layer, I use it a lot, are you talking about just slowing down the first walls, but leaving the fill of the base printing fast?
Yes, exactly that. For example, my standard PLA profile with hot bed and blue tape uses 20mm/S for walls and 40mm/S for the skin and I get perfect adhesion no matter how detailed the walls are.
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I would like to use Cura, but it crashes under linux. The python gui seems to have had this issue on early versions too.
I tried the latest last night. Tried to add my printer in the wizard (very pleased to see it listed!), and boom! Just core dumps on me. This is on the LTS 16.04 Ubuntu. But I had a lot of crashes on earlier versions to, eventually couldn't start it. Had to keep reinstalling it. It sometimes removed my profiles. There are a lot of issues with it in terms of usability.
That said, I stick with it when I can because the print quality is still better for me than Slic3r. Obviously I can't use the most recent versions, which is annoying, but that seems to be the way with cura. I just wish they had used something else for their gui to let it run ok on platforms such as linux.
But really, I'd like Ultimaker to offer cloud slicing. I'd probably pay a small monthly fee to have that via a really good web interface. You should take a look at OnShape to see how 3D modelling works great under html 5. Totally the way forward.
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I would like to use Cura, but it crashes under linux. The python gui seems to have had this issue on early versions too.
I tried the latest last night. Tried to add my printer in the wizard (very pleased to see it listed!), and boom! Just core dumps on me. This is on the LTS 16.04 Ubuntu. But I had a lot of crashes on earlier versions to, eventually couldn't start it. Had to keep reinstalling it. It sometimes removed my profiles. There are a lot of issues with it in terms of usability.
That said, I stick with it when I can because the print quality is still better for me than Slic3r. Obviously I can't use the most recent versions, which is annoying, but that seems to be the way with cura. I just wish they had used something else for their gui to let it run ok on platforms such as linux.
But really, I'd like Ultimaker to offer cloud slicing. I'd probably pay a small monthly fee to have that via a really good web interface. You should take a look at OnShape to see how 3D modelling works great under html 5. Totally the way forward.
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I build Cura on Linux and it runs just fine (except when new features break it but that's what you get when you live on the leading edge). Why don't you open an issue at https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues and provide useful info like cura.log and any console messages (if you run it from a terminal) so that there's a chance it can get fixed?
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Well I gave it a try on my coreXYUV machine using PETG filament.
It seems to pause at the end of every layer then retract and un-retract the filament before starting the next layer. This causes the nozzle to sit in one place and the filament to leak, causing blobs. I have tried to eliminate this behavior but have been unsuccessful. A second issue is that at the end of a print, the nozzle stays in contact with the printed part and unloads the filament. I can not find any setting that tells cura to unload the filament. It is ignoring my end gcode:-
M104 S0 ; turn off extruder
M140 S0 ; turn off bed
M106 S0 ; turn off part fan
G91
G1 Z5 E-1
G90
G1 X30 Y190 F3000Any suggestions before I go back to S3D?
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Well I gave it a try on my coreXYUV machine using PETG filament.
It seems to pause at the end of every layer then retract and un-retract the filament before starting the next layer. This causes the nozzle to sit in one place and the filament to leak, causing blobs. I have tried to eliminate this behavior but have been unsuccessful. A second issue is that at the end of a print, the nozzle stays in contact with the printed part and unloads the filament. I can not find any setting that tells cura to unload the filament. It is ignoring my end gcode:-
M104 S0 ; turn off extruder
M140 S0 ; turn off bed
M106 S0 ; turn off part fan
G91
G1 Z5 E-1
G90
G1 X30 Y190 F3000Any suggestions before I go back to S3D?
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I would like to use Cura, but it crashes under linux. The python gui seems to have had this issue on early versions too.
How up-to-date is your linux kernel? My installation of Cura used to crash regularly until a kernel update fixed a bug in Mono - which was something that the Cura author couldn't work around.
The Mono bug went away about a year ago, so if your kernel is older…
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I would like to use Cura, but it crashes under linux. The python gui seems to have had this issue on early versions too.
I'm using the appimage; works Ok on Ubuntu 17.10, Fedora 25 and 26. A couple of very random segfaults during normal use, and consistent coring out if I try to do a API connection to octoprint via a proxy, which is not part of my workflow so unimportant to me. I'd be curious to know if you use the appimage, or an an apt install?
But really, I'd like Ultimaker to offer cloud slicing. I'd probably pay a small monthly fee to have that via a really good web interface. You should take a look at OnShape to see how 3D modelling works great under html 5. Totally the way forward.
One of my goals with 3d printing is to free myself from downstream suppliers who dictate to me what I have, what shape and color it is, when I can have it etc. Becoming reliant on a cloud slicer seems like a step in the reverse direction. I am fearful that the very ability to slice and generate prints will eventually become a service, with patents used to reserve decent slicing facilities only for those with the bandwidth and money to afford them.
That said; as a complementary service It's a great idea; I work for a company making cloud service software; the list of potential drawbacks is countered nicely by a list of real advantages in terms of functionality, feature rollout, central storage, transposable UI's etc. It has a real place in the ecosystem.
TL;DR
It's easy to have an apparently up to date machine who's python install is horrible; Python has it's own package management (pip et al) which sits on top of the OS's package management system; and can get out of step. Especially if you are not familiar with it but start following 'joe-random-stackexchange's' 'guide how to fix python for X' online; since that big list of 'sudo -y pip install XXXX' commands may be really storing up issues for programs expecting the vanilla OS versions. Python pro's know to use virtualenvs etc at these moments, but joe-random doesn't have time to explain that.I believe the appimage supplies it own python libs; which is why I'm curious about your mileage with it.
Regarding Appimages; I simply wouldn't bother with either compiling locally, or installing a port/package. I'm a DevOps engineer and uber-familiar with installing and building apps (I generate over 100 rpm packages when we do a release, for instance..) ; and when I looked at the Cura build instructions I rapidly decided I have better uses for my personal time. The appimage worked first time, and every time. For context: My current 50% project at work is repackaging our Cloud platform into a appimage/binary blob/some other container instead of the 107 rpm's, plus 353 dependencies from CentOS upstream we currently churn through for our daily builds. (as of last night..)
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One other reason for me using Cura is that I find slic3r very flaky - it sometimes crashes when I add a STL file, for example. I also find the whole structure of slic3r inconvenient - I have to have 10 or 12 different setup files simply to accommodate the different diameters of filament I use. In Cura I just find the relevant line and change the number. The same goes for infill, etc.
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This is not actually a limitation in Cura anymore as it has an option to optimize the order that walls are printed so that it will print all the walls around a single hole first before moving on to another hole.
Can you point me to the exact parameter? I can't find it…
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I think it is still in the experimental category and it's called Optimize Wall Printing Order.
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Got it. Thanks!
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Just did my 1st print with cura in a long while. I found that the nozzle drags really badly on the infill. Tried going through all the settings but couldn't find anything that could be causing this….
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Just turn combing off, and then it won't drag the nozzle through the infill.
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I've made an effort to familiarize myself with Slic3r, Slic3r PE, and Cura 3. I've found things I like from all of them, but I typically find myself returning to Slic3r PE for a couple reasons. I have not used Simplify 3D. I have briefly used Kisslicer and will probably get deeper into it soon.
1. Cura has no speed control for small perimeters like bolt holes so the quality of the holes is incredibly poor. It leaves gaps and drags the filament around the curve. This makes the holes weak. Slic3r knows to slow down and the hole quality is perfect.
2. Cura seems to lack control over bridging and overhang parameters. It would be nice if you could specify slower print speeds and higher fan speeds during overhangs and bridging. The Cura help site just recommends reorienting the part to avoid bridging or to use support material. Slic3r gives a fan setting for bridging operations and gives good results. It also treats the first layer over infill as bridging, which means I can get away with fewer top layers.
3. Slic3r has an ensure vertical thickness setting, which will find areas of the top surface that might need additional layers underneath them and will add some material in a gap fill pattern. Typically under curves surfaces. This ensures the top surfaces will properly fill. I often have gaps when I use Cura, and the solution given to me by Ultimaker is to just use more top layers and denser infill.
4. Cura seems to lack support for firmware retraction. It does give fine control over retraction settings, but those settings are then backed into the gcode.
5. Cura lacks an easy way to manage linear advance K factor values. Slic3r now has that built in per filament config.
6. Cura lacks variable layer height. It would appear that this is coming in the next release, so I look forward to that.
7. Cura won't let you have a brim and a skirt. In Slic3r I use the skirt to prime the nozzle and a brim to help minimize warping. Cura lets me use one or the other. True I could use a larger brim and accomplish both, but a simple circle around the model is all I need to prime and a single wall brim is enough to adhere.
8. Cura was not giving me dimensionally accurate parts. I printed 2 end pieces to fit on the end of a 2020 extrusion. 1 with Cura and 1 with Slic3r, using the same settings as far as I could tell. The Slic3r part fit on the extrusion perfectly, the Cura piece needed ample filing to fit at all. The slic3r bolt holes were properly sized, the cura holes needed to be drilled. Perhaps I needed to modify the extrusion modifier for cura? Is flow % the same thing? I tried changing the flow % in other prints, but would get gaps between walls at anything less than 100%.
There are many things I like about Cura though.
1. I find the settings tree in the new GUI to be easy to use. As a new user coming to version 3 the defaults were fine, and when I needed a feature I couldn't find it was easy enough to add. I spent some time going through the settings and added nearly everything, and as I found what I used often and used never I simply hid the settings I no longer needed. I prefer that to the seperate tabs and views that Slic3r uses. It's interesting to note that the 1.3 dev branch of SLic3r allows you to build a similar sidebar menu which Slic3r PE has not yet brought across.
2. The layer preview is nicer than Slic3r I find, but a little slower. I like that it will simulate the tool head path. I like that it allows you to hide different path types so you can look at just the infill, or just the shell. I do wish they would separate the inner and outer walls and top and bottom surfaces out as well. The layer slider is a little sensitive. I like that it shows travel moves.
3. I like how Cura allows you to use modified meshes to define separate print settings for different areas of the model. Though it's usage is a little esoteric. Slic3r has similar modifier meshes but I find them even harder to use. It would be nice if this was exposed more easily in the GUI. For a while I was using these meshes to overcome the limitations I mentioned above, but it was taking forever to prepare a model. It was simpler to just use Slic3r.
4. I like that Cura gives very detailed control over print speed, acceleration, and jerk settings, minus bridging and overhangs. I find I'm able to get generally better print quality with lower print times from Cura, minus the complaints above.
5. Cura seems to properly support vase mode. Slic3r is very hit or miss.
All in all I would like to use Cura more, except for the issues I mentioned above. For now, if it's a mechanical part, I use Slic3r. If it's a art piece, I use Cura.
