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To open an STL as a solid body in Solidworks go to System options and select Import second from the bottom on the list on the left side of the options window. Then at top you should see a drop box labeled File Format:. Select STL/OBJ/OFF/PLY/PLY2 Below that drop box you will see Import As with the options for solid body, surface body, or graphics body. Setting it to wolid body will allow you to model with it as you would any other part.

Ultimaker Dark Theme Monitor screen, issues with black text on black background. Also I feel like the menu bar needs more space between items.

That did it. Thank you!

Hi Guys, Hopefully I'm just overlooking something but I do not see the option to scale a model in cura 3.3.1. On the left the only options are open, move, rotate, per model settings, and support blocker. I do not see the scale tool. Is there any way I may have accidentally turned scale off?

You actually can open an stl as a solid in Solidworks. Go to file - open, change the file type to stl, click options, and change import as to solid body. Edit: Just realized this is a really old post. Leaving it because hopefully someone finds this useful.

I think about the same as 3.0. I didn't notice any obvious differences.

They added (I first noticed them) buttons to jump to top, left, front, etc. views in 3.1 and they are helpful, but would be so much more useful if perspective could be toggled off.

Hello, I was hoping there was a way disable perspective viewing mode and have it be orthographic. This is very useful when trying to fit multiple large prints onto the bed. Provides a much clearer picture of the relative location of the parts.

I had this issue a lot. Turns out I needed a replacement print head coms cable. Guess there were some manufacturing defects in the cable. Was an pretty easy install, took about 15 minutes. Have had zero issues since and the print quality seems to have gotten better. Reach out to your re seller, they can hook you up with a new one.

I have done a lot of research into this and it seems to be caused by many factors and there isn't really an answer how to fix this. What I have done to minimize this is print a test piece of varying diameters (10mm-100mm for me). Then i measure the actual and compare it to the virtual size. This gives me a good idea of what size a hole will come out as and I adjust the model before printing.

This is really neat! I cant imagine modeling that was the easiest thing ever.

I'm sure that was the intent, but I suspect the issue was that the filament would slip on the wheel causing the sensor to detect that the wheel is not rotating smoothly or as much as it should. This would then pause the printer thinking the filament jammed when in reality there is no problem other than the filament slipping on the wheel. Our z18's had this issue. We resolved it by adding and o-ring to the groove on the wheel that the filament rode in. This added much more grip onto the filament and prevented these false filament jam errors.

I conducted the same test with my Logitech Performance MX mouse using their Darkfield Laser Sensor. I tested the filaments I had on hand, both with and without feeder wheel imprints, which were Hatchbox PLA orange and black, Taulman BluPrint Nylon, and 3DXtech HT PETG. All of the filaments were detected by the sensor and resulted in nice smooth cursor movement.

I too am interested in this. Our Z18's (take it easy on me not my call) uses a idler wheel pressed up against the filament entering the feeder. That wheel has a striped silver and black sticker on the outside face (the face perpendicular to the axis.) This rotation is detected by an optical sensor. There is also a mechanical switch that is pushed back when filament is present and extends when filament is not there. I assume the wheel is used to detect clogs and the switch is used to detect running out of filament. I know the 5th gen makerbots had a lot of issues (we got one a month after release so trust me I know all about the issues) and a lot of them were from this filament detection system. But overall it is a really smart system and once they tuned it through firmware updates it actually works really well.

This is kind of what I expected. Do you have specs on the power supply in the printer?