Why don't you use Cura slicer?

EasyTarget · 8 Feb 2018, 11:58

Apologies @burtoogle for hijacking the thread; I'll shut up on that now..

To be more ontopic; as a newbie I found Cura's slicing excellent, in particular the way it handles vase mode made me switch to it from slic3r. A bit more control of supports would be nice. And that is all I can find to comment on regarding how it slices models, the missing polygon issue I saw in a model with 3.0x appears resolved in 3.1 and 3.2.

burtoogle · 8 Feb 2018, 13:07

Hi @EasyTarget, I don't mind the thread wandering around a bit, it's all relevant. Manual supports is a hot topic over at Cura towers these days but, as I mention above, I only work on the back end so I don't really get involved in any of that. Glad you like the vase mode, improving that so that the seam gets well hidden was one of my contributions.

EasyTarget · 2 Aug 2018, 13:37

Edit: sorry for the edits…

An odd argument; and I apologize for being confrontational because srs5694 has many good points and is, in a very real sense, right. Especially about the desirability of having one solution; and breaking software down into individual items that can be individually upgraded for desktop users and static servers, and doing so in standard manners.

But; containerization technology (*) is finally becoming 'a thing'; Flatpack and Snaps are the related tech that somewhat address the problem of 'yet another standard' (https://xkcd.com/927/) because they will integrate well into deb and rpm based package systems (they are developed by Canonical and RedHat), but can also be deployed as web objects via a URI. This discussion is a small reflection on a wider discussion happening in the devops/developer world. It's my bread and butter, I probably care too much about it.

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(*) In case anybody is wondering; an appimage is simply a ISO disk image which is executable; when you 'run' an appimage it actually remounts itself via Fuse in /tmp and then executes the payload in that mounted read-only filesystem. This is why 'installing' them makes no real sense, you plonk the appimage anywhere you like and execute it as a non-root user, it will run from /tmp unless you force it elsewhere. Installing to the OS simply allows all users to do this easily; but for a one-user workstation it could just as easily be dropped on the desktop and doubleclicked on demand.

Flatpack and Snap are similar, with variations; and Docker, my preferred tool, takes this a step further by providing process, disk and network containers, more complex to manage but more powerful in terms of isolating a process from it's host.

And so I'm floating on clouds professionally; the OS is reduced to a simple base that I layer containers on top of to actually do stuff; and dont give a toss about the underlying OS flavor or it's update systems. We stay up to date by mirroring all changes to the upstream images, and simply kill+replace the old version. It's utterly alien to a traditional Linux desktop user experience. This is deeply related to cloud deployments and other OS virtualization and containerization techs.

As for why we do this; With containers we can spin up a very small cloud OS image, slap a docker container on it, and have it serving data in under a second; starting from the same image, installing and starting apps with yum takes minutes, even with a local repo. Starting a blank instance, installing with anaconda/kickstart, then updating, then installing the app takes 10. Now imagine you need to scale transcoding during the ads for the Superbowl; suddenly going from a few dozen streams to several tens of thousands as everybody changes channels and hits the guide. That is the problem containers solve for us and our customers; we can respond in real time instead of needing to estimate and pre-provision.

The ability of containers to standardize distribution for developers and free them from OS imposed restrictions is just an added bonus.

EasyTarget · 8 Feb 2018, 13:54

@burtoogle:

improving that so that the seam gets well hidden was one of my contributions.

there is a vase on my desk right now, I look at it and think ?what seam?, impressive!

And to all the slicer devs out there; as someone who can prod a computer to do things; but cant program for salt, I'd like to be appreciative.

Database and network apps etc are all very well, but I can see how they work. When software can take a (usually broken) mathematical model and realize that into a series of co-ordinates and moves between them according to complex plan, that's actually quite impressive. I cant even see HOW you do that in the first place.. image recognition, 3d scans from photos, etc all make me feel the same way, and rather humble considering how hard I found it to even write a 10 line arduino sketch.

T3P3Tony · 8 Feb 2018, 14:51

@burtoogle:

Hi @EasyTarget, I don't mind the thread wandering around a bit, it's all relevant. Manual supports is a hot topic over at Cura towers these days but, as I mention above, I only work on the back end so I don't really get involved in any of that. Glad you like the vase mode, improving that so that the seam gets well hidden was one of my contributions.

Is manual support placement a front end only problem to solve with Cura? I mean does the front end determine where the support should be so it can be modified to ask for support to be elsewhere as the user requires? If so then it seams like a specific job for a developer that could be packaged up and opened to the community for funding to have it implemented?

burtoogle · 8 Feb 2018, 15:13

Is manual support placement a front end only problem to solve with Cura? I mean does the front end determine where the support should be so it can be modified to ask for support to be elsewhere as the user requires? If so then it seams like a specific job for a developer that could be packaged up and opened to the community for funding to have it implemented?

As far as I am aware, support generation in the slicer (backend) is controlled by volumes (they call them meshes) that define the regions that are to contain support. It is already possible in the front end to define meshes that either specify where support should be added (and it wasn't added automatically) or regions where support should not be added. So, in a rather clunky fashion it is already possible to manually define where the support is to be generated. Assuming that basic functionality stays, the problem then boils down to having some GUI capability for the user to be able to easily add/subtract support (like s3d's pillars o'shite which you can create/remove). I think the majority of the work that needs to be done to have manual support is in the front end.

Incidentally, I shall be meeting some of the Cura devs later this month so I shall be sure to quiz them as to how the manual support capability is coming along.

biscuitlad · 12 Feb 2018, 13:40

I would like semi-auto support removal. I would like the UI to let me choose to start from fully generated support and I selectively remove, or start from no support and I selectively add. You need both, as we know it all depends on the model and your printer!

In reference to the crashes under linux, I'd say that in my experience it's the python libs that cause the problems. For example, I try add a config for a dual nozzle printer and bang - 2.7 just dies. Works fine for single nozzle configs. I mean really? Adding a dual nozzle config causes it to crash? That is pretty bonkers.

I try to use the PPA Master variants if I can, but I generally can't as they crash a lot. Latest PPA Master (3.2) for example crashed without starting the UI on Ubuntu LTS! Personally I don't upgrade LTS systems until Ubuntu tell me to. And it generally works really well.

I file my bug reports when I can, I have become accustomed to Cura and like it. I have no real issues with the slicing quality. The bridging could be better, but I'd really far rather have manual support removal!

T3P3Tony · 12 Feb 2018, 16:27

@burtoogle:

Incidentally, I shall be meeting some of the Cura devs later this month so I shall be sure to quiz them as to how the manual support capability is coming along.

Thanks, will be interesting to see what they say!

resam · 13 Feb 2018, 19:34

I just published a new Cura-DuetRRF plugin version to fix an incompatibility with Cura 3.2:
https://github.com/Kriechi/Cura-DuetRRFPlugin/releases/tag/v0.0.5

This plugin allows you to directly upload a g-code file to a DuetWifi/DuetEthernet/and older Duets and start the print.
You can even "just upload", "upload & print", or "upload & simulate" - all from within Cura.
https://github.com/Kriechi/Cura-DuetRRFPlugin

cbusillo · 14 Feb 2018, 16:12

resam, thanks for the hard work!!! Just FYI it crashes on Cura 3.2.1. It happens on print or simulate.

Is it possible to make this plugin work for the monitor screen and allow movement and temp changes?

resam · 14 Feb 2018, 17:10

meh - I can't keep up with Cura releases
I'll take a look in the next days…

EasyTarget · 14 Feb 2018, 17:31

Since I just butted my head against it here is stupid, trivial UI suggestion; a way to 'clone' a printer definition.

At the moment the only way is to add a New printer via the wizard/dialog, but I wanted to make a new config for my machine while it is (temporarily) wearing a much bigger nozzle.
I did it by following the dialog, then copy + pasting start/stop gcodes from the old config, and it was rather tedious. [Maybe I culd have hacked it more easily directly in the config but I wasnt in the mood]. It was trivial to do this in slic3r, so I was a bit narked when the same operation in Cura turned into a 'open,copy,close,open new,paste,close,open old,copy next' session

EasyTarget · 14 Feb 2018, 17:31

@resam:

meh - I can't keep up with Cura releases

This

cbusillo · 16 Feb 2018, 12:14

Thanks resam! I was somehow using an old version. Updated to 0.0.6 and I will try later. I'm looking forward to trying out Cura again

T3P3Tony · 16 Feb 2018, 23:26

@EasyTarget:

Since I just butted my head against it here is stupid, trivial UI suggestion; a way to 'clone' a printer definition.

At the moment the only way is to add a New printer via the wizard/dialog, but I wanted to make a new config for my machine while it is (temporarily) wearing a much bigger nozzle.
I did it by following the dialog, then copy + pasting start/stop gcodes from the old config, and it was rather tedious. [Maybe I culd have hacked it more easily directly in the config but I wasnt in the mood]. It was trivial to do this in slic3r, so I was a bit narked when the same operation in Cura turned into a 'open,copy,close,open new,paste,close,open old,copy next' session

+1 for this

dc42 · 18 Feb 2018, 21:18

Where is the setting in Cura to use a higher temperature for the first layer? I couldn't find it when I sliced a model today and ended up changing the temperature manually.

cbusillo · 18 Feb 2018, 21:28

Material : Printing Temperature Initial Layer on 3.2

tbahre · 2 Mar 2018, 15:05

Slighty off topic as I am giving Cura slicer a try, Just started using version (3.2.1) and found I'm having this issue outlined in the image below.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this is a problem generated by Cura.

burtoogle · 2 Mar 2018, 21:18

Not sure what's wrong there, could you please post a link to the gcode so I can investigate.

tbahre · 2 Mar 2018, 22:14

@burtoogle:

Not sure what's wrong there, could you please post a link to the gcode so I can investigate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ziml3INWFtu665eZGyqOi_tRXTQ8ulAn/view?usp=sharing

I should have added that everything was working fine in the print status window until I updated to 1.21RC2 firmware then subsequently to RC3. It doesn't help that at this same time I switched to Cura from S3D and have not yet tried S3D on the new firmware to see if it displays the same issue. At the end of this current 15 hour print I'm on I'll switch to S3D and see what happens. Everything was fine before I upgraded firmware and started using Cura.

The only possible thing that tipped me to blame Cura was a thread (cant remember which one) where others were having the same problem where the DWC print settings wouldn't update for files sliced with cura.