rachael7

Finally got this to work, once I got all the right Python modules installed. The one that really got me stuck was that I installed ndef instead of ndeflib. Also took me a while to figure out SWIG so I could install the pyscard module. Anyway, got it sorted, but I'm sure others following would still appreciate a handy executable. Thanks!

I really hate to ask, since you've done so much awesome work on this already, but I'm not much of a coder (dabbler, only) and I'm really not up to speed on Visual Studio Code. I keep getting errors about missing module PyQt5. Could I possibly impose on you to give us programming noobs either a step-by-step or a compiled executable? Thank you so much!

Thank you again! It would be great to be able to get all the files from Thingiverse! Please post back when you've had the opportunity to do that work. Thanks again for making this available to the community!

Great work! This is another excellent option! Where can I find/download your new files/BOM? Thanks!

I guess I didn't do a good enough job of explaining the problem. Let me try to outline it more clearly. - There is no issue with the generic materials. I can select them fine, but using the generic option doesn't allow one to use the full capabilities of the machine or Cura. There are many handicaps to using the generic material, including that you can only effectively use one at a time and you can't save their material parameters, so a custom material really is necessary to fully utilize the machine. - Creating new profiles is not difficult. I know how to do it, in exactly the way you said, by duplicating an existing profile, unlinking, and changing what is necessary. I know about the risk with handler-specific parameters, but in my experience it isn't a big problem if you start with a material that is close to the one you want to add. The issue is that, as but one example, you cannot add a new brand of PLA. If you wanted to use say Colorfabb Build Series PLA, you could duplicate the Generic PLA material, unlink it, change the necessary fields in the material definition, and save it. Next time you start Cura, it will download that new profile to the printer. The problem is that the new material will not appear as an option to select on the material handler when you load the material in the printer. However, if the material type field in the material settings, is set to 'PLA1' or 'PLA-A', instead of just 'PLA', the material WILL show up as an option to select on the material handler. Further experimentation will show that any new material you make, if it shares a material type with one of the generic materials, will not be available for selection on the material handler. Any new profiles with material types different from those available in the generics will be available for selection on the material handler. What I want to know is if this behavior was intentional or if this is a bug that needs to be addressed.

So after watching the Cura masterclass webinar, I followed the instructions and defined some new materials for use with my S5/Material Station. Some of the materials showed up on the material station and some didn't. After some experimentation I was able to determine that the ones that showed up have material types (PLA/ABS/etc) that were different from any of the generic material types and the ones that don't show up use one of the material types that also appear in the generics. So if I want to make a new PLA brand, I have to use a material type such as PLA1 in order to make it usable with the material station. Is this intended behavior or a bug?

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened to me. I don't know how you defined your printer, if you were using one of the ones built into Cura or if it was totally custom. My issue happened because I modified the files for one of the ones included with Cura and that caused an issue on the upgrade. If you are doing your own machine definition files, I strongly recommend you make your own name, unrelated to any that come with Cura, and keep a copy of the definition files outside of Cura in case you need to manually restore them after an update. I appreciate that this software was meant to work with the Ultimaker machines, but the fact that it doesn't handle updates well is a serious issue. It doesn't even remove the old version. It also doesn't handle machines well at all. If you have saved a workspace and that printer doesn't import properly to the new version, even if you recreate the printer in the new version, you can't open the saved file because it specifies a non-existent printer. Serious weakness!

Just to keep it clear for anyone who reads this later, it wasn't an issue with a profile. Those are easy enough to deal with by exporting and importing. This had to do with a custom machine definition, which cannot be exported or saved, and recreating it involves creating/editing JSON files in the program directory. Not trying to dig at you at all - I appreciate the help - it's just that this is a different issue and I don't want anyone to get confused about it. Thanks!

I resolved this issue. The problem did turn out to be that I modified the machine definition files included with Cura, rather than creating a new set of machine definition files. When I upgraded, part of what I did got overwritten and that created the conflict that was causing me all the trouble. So lesson learned - don't modify the JSON files supplied with Cura. Instead, copy the contents to a new file and define a new printer type. Once I did that, everything worked fine.

I'm trying to upgrade from 4.5 to 4.6.1. In addition to my UM2+, I also have a custom machine based on a Wanhao I3 Plus. I modified the physical machine with an all-metal hotend that has multiple nozzle choices, so I modified the Wanhao I3 Plus machine and extruder definitions to give me the nozzle size dropdown. I also had to add the nozzle variant files to make that work. It's working as expected in 4.5. When I upgraded to 4.6.1, on first run, I got the attached error messages about my extruder and variant definitions, and it went back to the basic machine definition with no nozzle dropdown. I attempted a second upgrade method, by uninstalling, reinstalling, and manually copying over my machine definition, extruder definition, and variants, before starting Cura. This caused Cura to crash when I tried to run it. What is the proper procedure to migrate a custom machine from Cura 4.5 to 4.6.1? Has something in the machine definitions changed between versions that is preventing the import of my custom machine? Could the problem be that I modified the original 4.5 definition files for the Wanhao I3 Plus, rather than duplicating them to a new machine? Thanks for any assistance!