ahoeben

I'm sure the dev team would love it if their job would be to sit in trendy furniture. Perhaps one day generative AI will get good enough to be the one to listen and do all the work.

Yes. Newer versions of Cura will make a copy of the latest Cura configuration they find (on first run after installation), and work with that copy. The original configuration is left untouched, and the original version of Cura will continue to use that. Before Cura 5, the installer for Cura versions would first offer to uninstall the previous version(s) you had installed. The uninstaller would ask you if you wanted to remove all data. If you answered "yes", that would remove all your configuration files for that version. Unfortunately many people did not read the dialogs provided by the installer and lost their configurations. Recent installers have not offered to uninstall older versions, leaving that up to the user when they are comfortable with the new version.

Well, Cura is open source. All that is stopping you from contributing to it is you. See https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/.

@Slashee_the_Cow, I don't think the hostile tone is necessary. There are many people who want to create a more automated way to create gcode from models (many topic on commandline usage of CuraEngine), and this could be an interesting approach to some.

If the model has very fine details, not everything can be drawn with the thick lines that come out of your 3D printer. Cura will fit lines inside of the shape outlined by your mesh. If this is not possible, nothing will be printed. In that case, it may appear as if parts of the print are missing. There are a couple of things that can be done about this: Enable the Print Thin Walls setting. This will let the printer use thinner lines to print very thin parts, although they might become wider than the model intends them to be. Reduce the line width. If you're printing something that has thin walls or webbings, make sure that the line width is slightly smaller than the minimum width of that part. However reducing the line width too much may cause underextrusion due to insufficient flow. To be able to reduce the line width further, you'll need to use a smaller nozzle. Add some horizontal expansion to the print. This makes the entire model wider on all sides, including the thin parts. They become less thin that way, so that they may now be printed. This does of course also ruin any dimensional accuracy and detail of the print since everything becomes thicker. Consider adjusting the model to the print, by making every piece at least as thick as your line width.

The UM2 cannot support printing over USB with the gcode flavor set to "Ultimaker 2". Never has, never will. "Ultimaker 2" gcode is simply not compatible with USB printing and can only be used via SD card. "Marlin" flavored gcode should be compatible with both USB and SD card printing, though when you print it via SD-card the printer will tell you that the gcode overrides settings made on the printer.

It helps that I am the one who originally wrote the functionality to set the GCode flavor for the Ultimaker 2 to Marlin, which was necessary for printing via OctoPrint. The default gcode flavor for the Ultimaker 2 is - surprisingly - "Ultimaker 2" (actually "UltiGCode" in the backend). UltiGcode does not use materials, but when the flavor is set to Marlin some extra functionality is added to the Ultimaker 2 definition in Cura to support materials. It looks like loading a project for an UM2 with the gcode flavor set to Marlin "forgets" to add that functionality. After the crash you have an Ultimaker 2 with Marlin gcode flavor but no materials. That should not be possible.

@Slashee_the_Cow, I got the same crash. That is a bug worth reporting. Unfortunately I don't have time to investigate today. I did find a workaround to load the project: After the crash and restarting Cura, there is an Ultimaker 2 configured in Cura. Go the the Machine Settings dialog and set the Gcode flavor to "Ultimaker 2" and back to "Marlin". After that I could successfully load the project file. Normally for the UM2 you select the material on the printer, so there is no material to select in Cura. Unless you change the gcode flavor to "Marlin". In that case, you can change the material in Cura, and it will override what is used in the printer. @Kenross1951, after using the workaround above to load the project, the model slices just fine for me. Could you perhaps try the same trick (changing the Gcode flavor to "Ultimaker 2" and back to "Marlin") and then try to slice again?

Cura 5.4 and 5.5 both should work with the Ultimaker 2 just fine. Having two versions installed side-by-side does not cause any problems. Your "continuous slicing" issue could be related to the model or your settings. Please create a project (File -> Save project...) and share it here with some file sharing service (google drive, dropbox, etc), so we can have a look.

There is a fairly quick way to find this out yourself... I don't have a UM 2+C to test, but AFAIK, the gcode is streamed from the USB drive while printing. The file is not copied to the internal memory.

The Mesh Tools plugin has an option to auto-scale STLs. But please remember that it will scale all STLs, not just those that you modeled in inches.

@Joeydelasagne as so often with Cura and plugins, you'll have to scour the source and look at examples. The most up-to-date example is https://github.com/Ultimaker/CuraEngine_plugin_gradual_flow, but there are more: https://github.com/Ultimaker?q=curaengine_plugin&type=all

You seem to have the "Spiralize Outer Contour" option on, which needs to be turned off. You will also need to check the "Remove all holes" setting, which also needs to be turned off.

Yes, as mentioned above: Lower the Maximum Resolution value in Cura.

The problems with the Materials pane of the preferences are caused by an interplay between Cura 5.5 and the Material Settings plugin. This has been fixed for the stable 5.5 release, and also in a DEV release of the Material Settings plugin, available here: https://github.com/fieldOfView/Cura-MaterialSettingsPlugin/releases/tag/v3.6.1-DEV Download the .curapackage for Cura 5.0-current, and drop the file onto the buildplate in Cura as if you were opening a 3d model.

Just add a Custom FFF printer first. You can remove it later.

Mostly, yes. That does not mean I can never pick it up again, especially with the recent introduction of CuraEngine plugins, but I have not done so since july 2022.

See this OctoPrint plugin for example: https://github.com/paukstelis/OctoPrint-Cancelobject

For the record, "rendering" normally refers to showing something on screen. The issue here is not showing the preview on screen, but "slicing" your model (creating a toolpath from your 3d model with your selected settings).

The model seems to be too thin in the area where there's a hole. There are a couple of things that can be done about this: Enable the "Print Thin Walls" setting. This will let the printer use thinner lines to print very thin parts, although they might become wider than the model intends them to be. Reduce the line width. If you're printing something that has thin walls or webbings, make sure that the line width is slightly smaller than the minimum width of that part. However reducing the line width too much may cause underextrusion due to insufficient flow. To be able to reduce the line width further, you'll need to use a smaller nozzle. Add some horizontal expansion to the print. This makes the entire model wider on all sides, including the thin parts. They become less thin that way, so that they may now be printed. This does of course also ruin any dimensional accuracy and detail of the print since everything becomes thicker. Consider adjusting the model to the print, by making every piece at least as thick as your line width.

How is this going to work for plugins that do not ship with Cura then?

As far as I know, only the Gradual Flow plugin that ships with Cura uses the new CuraEngine plugin system. This beta is basically the first time plugin developers have a mostly stable architecture to work with.

Beta versions of the Sidebar GUI and Tabbed Settings plugins that work with the Cura 5.5 beta are available here: https://github.com/fieldOfView/Cura-SidebarGUIPlugin/releases/tag/v4.6.3-DEV https://github.com/fieldOfView/Cura-TabbedSettingsPlugin/releases/tag/v1.0.3-DEV Download the .curapackage and drop it onto the buildplate in Cura as if you were opening a 3d model. Update: both plugins have updated versions available in the Marketplace. The beta versions above are no longer needed.

Try Edit -> Reset all model positions The problem is that for 3mf files, Cura (tries to) put the models in their original location relative to the origin. Apparently your model is below the origin in Solidworks. For STL files, Cura places the model in the center of the buildplate.

The correct way to do this would be to use a printer definition that sets the `file_formats` to include `application/x-ufp`, like the Ultimaker S5 definition for example does here: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/blob/main/resources/definitions/ultimaker_s5.def.json#L10