Hello beta testers,
I have contributed some new features that are in 2.5 and thought it would be a good idea if I say a few words about what those features are and how they are used.
Expand Skins Into Infill
This new infill setting gives you the ability to specify that skin layers are expanded so that they extend further into areas of infill. This is particularly useful when you have a horizontal surface with other features (walls, etc.) on top and sparse infill below.
Up till now you were forced to have very dense infill to avoid the holes that often appeared where a horizontal surface and a wall (above) met. There are settings to specify how much the skins should be expanded and also how much they should be shrunk before expanding. This avoids expanding narrow areas of skin that lie next to walls that are not vertical.
Minimum Infill Area
Another infill setting that allows you to specify that areas of infill smaller than the given area are replaced with skin.
Top/Bottom Line Directions & Infill Line Directions
This settings let you specify a list of integer directions (angles) that are used cyclically as the layers progress for those patterns that make sense (i.e. line, zig zag). The list syntax is numbers separated by commas and surrounded by square brackets. Empty lists mean just use the default values which are 45 and 135 degrees. When to use them? Well, for example, I have a part that I want the zigzag infill to be as strong as possible in one direction so I use [45, 0, 135, 0] which makes every other infill layer be in a N direction and the other layers alternate between NE and SE.
Retract Before Outer Wall
In the travel section, enabling this option will force travel moves that are going to an outer wall to use retraction. This reduces the chance of the nozzle dragging plastic to the wall when combing.
Improved Spiralize Mode
The spiralize mode has been rewritten. It now works harder to produce a smooth spiral which (given a suitable model) will produce a watertight end result (good for vases!)
If you have any problems using these features, please open a thread and if you find bugs, please open an issue on github.