GregValiant

Fixable can mean a couple of things here. The model as-is can be printed after some minor repair from a program line MS 3D Builder or an on-line STL Repair service. It will be printed as per the model's current design. If the design of the model is wrong then "fixable" probably doesn't come into it. The model can be adjusted, redesigned, reworked, or good ole' throw-it-out-and-start-over, but there is no "repair" in that case because there really wasn't anything wrong with it from a manufacturing view, it just didn't do the job. The printers are good little robots. They are accurate and will faithfully reproduce the print time after time. But if the model is designed wrong then it's just a waste of some plastic. It's why they call them prototypes. I don't print "minis" or very much artsy-craftsy stuff. I'm a mechanical guy and I print functional parts so for me it's always function over form. There is a lot of freedom in designing for FDM though. Rules that are necessary constraints when a part will be steel or aluminum get thrown out and you can make some remarkable looking parts that are fully functional.

Once you learn to tell the difference between a CAD error and a slicer error things will go better. When you look at a model and say "What the heck is going on here!!!" it isn't good. When the question becomes a comment like "Ah-Ha, I know what I did." then life is much better. At least you don't have to wait for some ying-yang to come in from trimming his hedges in order to make his response.

I exported the model as an STL and converted it to a DXF file and opened it in AutoCad. What you are getting in the Cura preview is a true and accurate representation of the model. There are multiple compound angles and facets all over the place and that includes the primary top surfaces. They aren't just flats that happen to be tipped about both the X and Y axes, the surface might have been designed with a radius but it was lost in the translation to STL.

Cura slices precisely through the model. Every section it makes is parallel to the build plate. So if you are getting all those steps, and the bottom is flush on the build plate, then the top is at an angle. Use the "File | Save Project" command and post the 3mf file here and I'll take a look.

With the model loaded and Cura ready to slice select the "File | Save Project" command and post the 3mf file here. When I tried to open that STL file it blew Cura right out of the water. After repairing the model it opened and sliced fine. I would be surprised if there was something in the gcode telling the printer to quit. Post the 3mf file. It will tell the tale. One thing you can try is shortening the file name. Keep the prefix under 16 characters. It's possible that a line like this: ";MESH:978283201_STUDIOMODIFIED-THICKERWINDOORS.stl" (that appears right after the skirt finishes) could be causing an issue. My older CE3Pro hates long file names.

It isn't flat in those areas. Each step is 1 layer height tall so it looks like the long surface on the left has about 6 steps in it. That would be 9.00mm at your 1.50 layer height. That's a lot. Are you sure the model is flat on the build plate? The brim looks odd and appears to be cutting across under the model. That is usually a symptom that the model isn't setting flat. Select the model and then click on the "Rotation" tool. One of the options is to "Lay Flat".

In 5.0 and 5.1 you get something like this: G1 F1500 X106.692 Y105.679 E230.0867 ;> Last extrusion G0 F9000 X106.692 Y106.2 ;MESH:NONMESH G0 F600 X106.692 Y106.2 Z1.04 G0 F9000 X105.87 Y105.87 G0 X105.6 Y105.6 ;Small layer, adding delay G1 F2100 E225.0867 ; > Retract 5.0 if there was no retraction since last extrusion G0 F9000 X105.6 Y105.6 Z4.04 G0 X119.742 Y119.742 G4 P48796 ; > dwell is dependent on Actual Layer Time, Min Layer time, and Min Speed. There were a couple of instances in the gcode where there was no retraction within the "Small layer, adding delay" section. In all of those cases there was a retraction directly after the last extrusion and so a second retraction wasn't desired. If you open the gcode file in a text editor and search for "G4" you will see the delay sections. If there is no retraction within the little section then look above for the last extrusion. There should be a retraction right after it. If your "Max Combing Distance with no Retract" is too high, or if the "Retraction Minimum Travel" is too high then maybe there wouldn't be a retraction(?)

In Manage Printers and then Machine Settings de-select the "Origin at Center" box.

I see it now. I wonder if one of those other plugins you have installed over-wrote it or deleted it? Maybe @nallath can take a look tomorrow.

You might have to go back to 4.13 to fix that. I've tried before and didn't find a way to put a hole in the bottom of a spiralized print.

Your printer Origin is the Left Front Corner NOT the center. This is from the definition file of the I3 Mega S "machine_center_is_zero": { "default_value": false }, So de-select it.

If the model isn't solid through-and-through then spiralize will print the outer wall that is facing outwards, and the outer wall that is facing inwards. That is not what you are looking for but Cura is trying to print the model you have open. You can enable the Mesh Fixes setting "Remove All Holes" to make the model solid so it has a single exterior surface. That will allow spiralize to work. There have also been complaints about the bottom layer pattern in Spiralize. There is only one option now and it is "concentric". There has been a bug report opened on GitHub regarding that.

The post processors should be under "Extensions / Post Processing / Modify Gcodes" When the dialog opens select "Add a Script" and both Filament Change and Pause at Height should be in the list. Be advised that it's possible that neither will work with your Ender as Creality seems to have made a hash of the firmware and M0, M25 and M600 may not pause the print.

Cura has no idea how big your build plate is or where it is. The Machine Settings explain "how big" to the software. Your printer has no idea where it's own build plate is. When you Auto-Home then the X Y Z switches are hit. That is the only position where the print head is positively located (any other position is measured in "steps" from that location). You need to set your home offsets because that's where 0,0,0 of a Cura gcode file will be located. The Home Offset location is what synchronizes the virtual build plate in Cura to the physical build plate of the printer. The Ender 3 Pro definition file should put your X(width) = 220, the Y(depth) = 220 and the Z(height) = 250. Creality puts a 7.5mm "safety area" around the periphery of the build surface so yes, it measures 235 x 235 and the "build area" is smaller. You can cheat that by setting Cura to 230 x 230 x 250 and moving your Home Offset to 2.5mm in from the left and 2.5mm back from the front edge. The Print Head settings define the shape of the print head and are measured from the centerline of the nozzle. MinX and MinY will be negative numbers. The "gantry height" is the distance from the tip of the nozzle to the bottom of the X beam. Yours should be 25mm. The Print Head settings and the Gantry Height only come into play if you have multiple models on the build plate and elect to print them in "One at a Time" model. Those numbers give Cura an idea of the interference space as it prints a particular model. The Extruder tab has settings for the X and Y offset. These might be non-zero for a multiple extruder printer, but yours should both be "0". Since they are zero, whether or not you check the "Apply Extruder Offsets to Gcode" doesn't matter since there is just one hot end. Now Cura and the printer are in sync, the 0,0,0 of the gcode file will be at your Home Offset location. The mid point of your physical bed should match the mid point of Cura's virtual bed. The nozzle is at Z = 0 and the bed must be brought to it using the knobs on the underside. Once you have it there, the "Z offset" will be the adjustment between the tip of the sensing probe and where the nozzle is during probing. At least that's how I think it works. I use a piece of paper.

The Cura Marketplace has a plugin for Cylindrical Supports. That gives you the option of adding cylindrical Mesh Modifiers at your screw connection holes.

"where some sections get tightened between screws as part of a clamping system..." The problem isn't being "strong enough" but rather cold flow deformation that many plastics are subject to. When you apply constant pressure the plastic will move causing the clamping pressure to drop. The screws connection appears to come loose with no movement of the screw/nut system. You can try putting in infill mesh support blockers at the screw holes to increase the walls. You can use Grid infill at 15 or 20% and set the "Infill Line Multiplier" to 3 and set the infill structure so it is square to the walls. Typically that would be with the "Infill Line Directions" at [0,90]. That will help prevent warping/lifting and make for a strong piece in compression. These models are identical wiht the infill density at 20% but the right model shows the other changes described above. The view shows just the top layer of the infill for clarity.

This is a topic of a bug report here > GitHub. It appears there might be a solution to it discussed there.

FieldOfView is @ahoeben on this forum and is the implementer/expediter/part-author(?) of the ArcWelder. He will have a better take on the Magic involved. To use ArcWelder, the firmware of the printer must support G2 (CW) and G3 (CCW) commands or it won't understand them. In regards to the G2/G3 commands within Marlin firmware there is a setting for "MINIMUM_ARC_SEGMENT_LENGTH" and the default is 1mm and that would be the "Movement Resolution". That would compare to the "Maximum Resolution" setting in Cura. I think that pipe organ looking print would benefit from either ArcWelder or a higher Max Resolution setting. Regarding Max Resolution you want the lowest setting that allows your printer to move smoothly without stuttering. Once you have it where you like it then you can leave it alone. Stick the glass plate and model in the freezer for 15 minutes. I pop the prints off using the putty knife that came with my printer, and a tack hammer (A LFH as opposed to a Harley Tool which is a BFH).

I have a good rant on single wall "calibration" cubes around here someplace. The bottom line is that if you calibrate for a single wall model you will be able to print perfect single wall models. On all other models the flow will be wrong. How many actual single wall models do you print? Calibrate your E-steps. Scale a calibration cube to 100 x 100 x 1mm tall and print it. The skins are the best indicator for flow and let your own eyeballs see what's going on. You can tweak the flow using the LCD as it prints. It will be darn close to correct at 100% flow. I calibrated my Ender for PLA and I have found that PETG is better at 105%. (BTW I picked up a microscope at a garage sale. It's really good for inspecting prints but a magnifying glass ain't bad.) Regarding cooling. As you've no doubt found, PETG is prone to warping. Certain shapes are worse than others. If you have a section that is long, narrow, and fairly tall then you know it's going to lift. I often design elephant ears into my prints to help hold them down and I always use a fair coating of hair spray as an adhesion promoter because I've found it's a must for PETG on the glass bed. There is a plugin in the Cura MarketPlace called "Tab Anti-Warping" that you can use on corners of your print to help keep them from lifting. The bed is hot and so there are often problems with curling near the bed. Once you get up higher you can start to use some fan. At what layer and how much fan depends on your own system. I designed a single 5015 system for my Ender and it's pretty good so about 40% works well for PETG. I also wrote myself a post processor to add cooling profiles to gcodes. I check the preview in Cura and then build a profile that turns the fan on and off at specific layer heights. That works quite well but it wouldn't work for just the bow of the Benchy. This print is a shark fin in PETG. It's long, narrow, and tall. Even with the tabs it pulled their middle area up almost a millimeter. (It's paused here as to slide a 4mm x 225mm steel rod down a hole on the inside to keep it from warping. I mounted these on the roof of our SUV so we could find it in parking lots. The sun is tough in Florida.) Here you can see how hard it was pulling. I used a simple cooling profile on this as only the tip at the top really needed it. The cooling profile thing is part of this modestly named app - Greg's SD Print Tool which you only get if you throw away those single wall calibration cubes. I went into another rant and almost forgot one of your questions. When Cura does a slice there can be line segments in the range of microns. Each of those line segments takes a line of gcode to print it. That's the resolution we're talking about rather than the overall resolution of the model (which is a function of the STL, 3mf, OBJ, etc. file). So the Maximum Resolution needs to be tuned for your printer so it can run smoothly around circles and curves while keeping up with all the calculations it needs to make. The longer a line is the more time the printer/planner has to calculate the next move. At some point we need to remember that we're talking about molten plastic here so whether an extrusion is .00001mm long or .1mm long are you going to notice a difference? You will if it stutters and leaves blobs while it's trying to process all those .00001 long lines.

Look at the Mesh Fixes section of settings and find the Maximum Resolution. The default for most Creality printers is 0.4. What is your setting? A higher number will have the effect of lowering the print resolution by combining short line segments into longer ones. If Cura chops a circle into a bazillion extremely short line segments then the printer might have to pause for a couple of micro-seconds and that can cause a little blob each time the nozzle hesitates. With a higher maximum resolution it takes less lines of gcode to describe the same geometry and so the printer doesn't get bogged down waiting for the next gcode line to get translated. The warping on the bow near the build plate is probably a cooling issue. There is a slight overhang there and so a feather edge gets created for a few layers. It curls up a bit and then the nozzle knocks it back down. The result is often a defect. About all you can do is make sure the layer start and stop point and the Z seam are someplace other than the front of the boat. The port or starboard corners of the transom would be better choices (I'm being nautical). Your flow at 80% would seem to indicate that your E steps aren't calibrated correctly. PETG or not, having to force a 20% under-extrusion like that isn't really where you want to be. I print a lot of PETG and at 105% flow it looks much like PLA at 100% when I put a sample of each side-by-side under the microscope.

I printed a hole chart once. I was looking at the effect of "Hole Horizontal Expansion" and one of the side issues that because apparent was that vertical holes under about 1.2mm diameter don't want to print with a .4 nozzle. The molten plastic gets dragged into the center of the hole before it can cool and become solid. On a horizontal round hole you were too close to being only 1 layer thick (depending on where the Cura slice went through) and so I can see where getting rid of the radius would help. "I changed the air vents to squares." Good job figuring that out. Ya gotta love a good workaround.

It depends on when someone gets around to looking at the forum. I didn't have any trouble slicing the model (Ender 3 Pro) but parts of it won't print. The details are too fine OR pieces just aren't attached too other parts and will fail. The front door is a 4 panel but the panels themselves won't connect to the stiles and rails. You can just make out the vertical gap on the right window frame as well. The roof is so thin that it will only print as separate bridges extending the long way across. Those will fail as well. On the left is the model after repair in MS 3D Builder and on the right is the model as you posted it. You can see that there are a lot of errors in your model. Scaling the repaired model up to 200% helped with the gaps like in the door. You can't really print a small scale "to scale" architectural model. Certain things (like the front door and windows) need to be designed with the FDM process in mind. That means that a glass window can't have it's thickness to scale but rather at maybe quadruple thickness so it will print. The four panel front door might need to be a caricature of a 4 panel door, not the exact door.

Install an AnyCubic printer that is close to yours. You can change the build plate size in the Machine Settings. An important setting is the StartUp Gcode. It looks like your printer has an Auto-Level gizmo. You will need to add a command to your startup gcode to get the leveling routine to run. That command is often G29 but it might be M420. Either way there could be parameters that are necessary. Check over on Reddit and see if you can get some guidance there. A square is a rectangle with equal sides. A circle is an ellipse with equal major and minor diameters.

All those islands make it a tough part. Setting the Z seam to the center of the part (midpoint of the bed in this case) and enabling Z Seam Relative and then setting the layer start and end points to the same position helps. There are 4 travel moves across the center and with retraction turned off there will be strings. There will be strings between all the islands as well. Here is my effort. GV_sello4.3mf

The accuracy of the print time is often dependent on the Accel settings and to a lesser degree the Jerk settings. I don't know S3D but you can get the Cura times to better reflect reality by being honest with Cura regarding the settings. You can tell Cura to use an Accel of 3000mm/sec² but within the printer (unless you changed it) Creality usually has a 500mm/sec² limit. So the Cura estimate can be based on faulty input. That's a big hit right there. After slicing - just above the "Save to Disc" button is a circle with an "!" in it. Hover the mouse over it and you will get a synopsis of where the time is spent. Another thing that can have an effect on small features is "Minimum Layer Time". The layer needs time to cool before the next one goes down and so Cura will drop the print speed to maintain the minimum time. Cura 5.1 has a new setting called "Flow Equalization Ratio" that is there to deal with the variable line width. It smooths out the speed between a line that goes down at your maximum line width versus a line that might go down at minimum line width. You can set it to "0" to take it out of play. Prints can be a tad better using it at higher numbers. Overall I've found that for my Ender 3 Pro Cura over-estimates by around 10%. I did kick up the Accel and Jerk limits using M201 (accel) and M205 (Jerk). There was one poster here who was using 7mm of retract but his E speed was only 1mm/sec. That's 14 seconds for each retract and prime. That was really bad.