Thoughts about the new Cura

[xeno 108]

I wish someone told at the release it was still beta, so I would not have posted all my frustration,

and looked like a dick again !

I will wait for the announcement New Cura is now usable

[nallath 1,122]

Is there a plan to make this run on Ubuntu 14.04?

 

Yes.

[nallath 1,122]

I wish someone told at the release it was still beta, so I would not have posted all my frustration,

and looked like a dick again !

I will wait for the announcement New Cura is now usable

 

Technically it is a release. But see it a bit more as an open beta. We've learned that we need to be more careful with expectation management. We tested it for 2 months with people from the community, but when building something from the ground up that just isn't enough apparently.

Frustrated means you care, that's good. Don't worry, we have thick skins. We also want this to be awesome.

[danilius 118]

@nallath, communication is definitely the issue here. I think that if you would have said something like: "beta with limited functionality, warning may fall apart if you look too hard at it" you would have saved yourself a great deal of grief.

My experience from Blender is that people who do not depend on that software for their income whine a great deal while professional users (i.e. people who do make a living out of Blender) simply file a bug report, find a workaround and soldier on. One reason I am no longer active in the blenderartists forum is because some amateurs there are very vocal, rude and demanding and will attack anyone who dares mention that Blender was never aimed at hobbyists, constantly claim it's broken and lousy. This despite the amazing stuff that is created with Blender every day, and its great price point.

There is nothing wrong with releasing a flaky, limited beta. Far from it, it's the best way to ensure you create a robust product with all the correct features in the right places. You just need to upgrade your users :-)

[nallath 1,122]

@nallath, communication is definitely the issue here. I think that if you would have said something like: "beta with limited functionality, warning may fall apart if you look too hard at it" you would have saved yourself a great deal of grief.

 

I know. I thought this was going to be how we were going to do it, but turned out I was wrong. Because of that, I never poked people why we weren't doing it, so I found out when we released it.

But we're getting there. It would definately help if users think about the data we might need to solve the problem. We still get too much issues saying; 'It crashes, fix it!'

[gr5 2,177]

We tested it for 2 months with people from the community, but when building something from the ground up that just isn't enough apparently.

And I strongly recommended it not be released on July 1 as it was so buggy 2 weeks before I couldn't really use it. Only 4 days before release did I feel I could finally slice something and print something but I was in a rush that weekend and used the "old" cura.

[nallath 1,122]

And I strongly recommended it not be released on July 1 as it was so buggy 2 weeks before I couldn't really use it.  Only 4 days before release did I feel I could finally slice something and print something but I was in a rush that weekend and used the "old" cura.

 

I wasn't in that loop, so I can't say anything about this. I will check where this went wrong.

[gr5 2,177]

I think there was an artificial deadline of July 1. I think the new Cura was promised for July and they planned to ship no matter what. I suppose that's fine as long as you tell people it's a beta. Hell, pretty much all of google's products still say "beta" on them, lol. It's about managing expectations.

[danilius 118]

This sounds a lot like marketing-driven management. Horrible, horrible, horrible. It simply does not work with the geek community. We are way too canny to get sucked into something like this.

Far, far better is to do what Ultimaker is really good at: simply say what the reality is. I think the most important thing is to avoid all the old-economy marketing ploys, and go for new-economy marketing.

This means being 100% honest the whole time. After all, this is what open-source is all about. Now, I am not accusing Ultimaker of being dishonest, let's be clear about that. I'm just saying that you should take all this feedback to whoever made the rather poor decisions on this release and shove it in their face and tell them: "They are geeks. Wake up. It's perfectly OK to say to a geek 'this is a sucky beta; enjoy' because that's exactly what geeks enjoy. Sucky betas. It makes them feel they are getting a shiny new toy before anyone else. Sad, but that's how they are."

Edited July 7, 2015 by Guest

[LePaul 322]

 

I see in the advanced settings Heated Bed unchecked.

 

Check the "Bed Temperature" checkbox in Machine settings and set the value to 0 degrees in Advanced. It will not insert the M190 line into your .gcode that way.

 

Thank you!

[LePaul 322]

I think there was an artificial deadline of July 1.  I think the new Cura was promised for July and they planned to ship no matter what.  I suppose that's fine as long as you tell people it's a beta.  Hell, pretty much all of google's products still say "beta" on them, lol.  It's about managing expectations.

 

As usual....you nailed it. Rush it out the door by THIS date instead of releasing when the product in shambles. Not the sort of attention you want to garner (rushed work versus quality).

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

As @gr5 wrote most of the bugs found by the closed beta team were fixed. However there are obviously more bugs. They could have been fixed if the present version would have been published as an RC. I was surprised this didn't happen. Here UM somehow broke with the past.

But I'm glad to see e.g. @nallath to put so much effort into analysing and solving issues people find.

[ultiarjan 1,223]

Question about nozzle size vs line width;

when I change the nozzle size in the .jsor file to 0.8 (and add a new machine etc..) the default line width is also changed to 0.8.

Q: does the line width only affect the line width, or does it also change the distance between the lines drawn by new cura?

The behaviour I would like to see is;

Set nozzle size (in a still to be done machine menu), to affect the distance between the lines drawn.

Set the various line widths to basically over/under extrude to influence the line width (obviously based on the combi nozzle size/layer hight ....)

If you can set the line width f.e. separate for the bottom you can make a vase watertight, or make sure a top surface is nicely closed etc...

[nallath 1,122]

But I'm glad to see e.g. @nallath to put so much effort into analysing and solving issues people find.

 

Just doing what needs to be done

[nallath 1,122]

Q: does the line width only affect the line width, or does it also change the distance between the lines drawn by new cura?

 

I believe it should also change the distance else it would have massive overlap.

[xisle 34]

Set the various line widths to basically over/under extrude to influence the line width

 

What about Flow Compensation for various parts:

 

Bottom Flow %

Top Flow %

Infill Flow %

Support Flow %

etc.. vs. the one Flow % setting that is currently available.

[nallath 1,122]

"They are geeks. Wake up. It's perfectly OK to say to a geek 'this is a sucky beta; enjoy' because that's exactly what geeks enjoy. Sucky betas. It makes them feel they are getting a shiny new toy before anyone else. Sad, but that's how they are."

 

It's not a poor decision, just communication that went wrong here. Lot more people involved, so stuff like this is bound to happen. We do need to learn about this and I've advocated this point a lot.

[danilius 118]

Rush it out the door by THIS date instead of releasing when the product in shambles.  Not the sort of attention you want to garner (rushed work versus quality).

 

I disagree here - the release at this stage was the correct thing to do. It gives Ultimaker the chance to do a more thorough job of debugging, feature and UI testing. I applaud them for doing that! Or more likely I will once the Ubuntu 14.04 version comes out :-)

The only thing that went wrong was that they forgot to scream from the rooftops that this was a flaky beta. Or maybe they thought it was a great beta. Who cares. They have not disappointed me; I used to be a software developer and know that there are bugs in every piece of software except for "hallo world". I expect an initial release to be buggy. I work with buggy software day in day out (Blender, FreeCAD, Ubuntu, GIMP etc.).

Regular users, however, want "regular" software releases. They should have been warned off, or at least told that this release might kill their goldfish, as happened to me.

[ultiarjan 1,223]

 

Q: does the line width only affect the line width, or does it also change the distance between the lines drawn by new cura?

 

I believe it should also change the distance else it would have massive overlap.

 

Not if it would set the distance based on the nozzle size in the .jsor file ... as I would like it to be ..

[nallath 1,122]

Not if it would set the distance based on the nozzle size in the .jsor file ... as I would like it to be ..

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Could you try to explain what the expected behaviour is compared to what happens?

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

 

Set the various line widths to basically over/under extrude to influence the line width

 

What about Flow Compensation for various parts:

 

Bottom Flow %

Top Flow %

Infill Flow %

Support Flow %

etc.. vs. the one Flow % setting that is currently available.

 

I'm not sure this would be the right way. I still believe if everything is ok with the printer/filament one does not have to compensate the flow.

I do have sometimes the necessity to increase flow (e.g. with black Ultimaker PLA) but with high quality filament I do not have this problem.

[gr5 2,177]

 

Not if it would set the distance based on the nozzle size in the .jsor file ... as I would like it to be ..

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Could you try to explain what the expected behaviour is compared to what happens?

 

Ultiarjan wants to increase flow to make things watertight.  but different increases for different parts of the cup.  So he thinks of it as printing 1mm lines with a .8mm nozzle and lines separated by .8mm such that they overlap (watertight).  Other's may call this "flow=120%".  It's the same thing but from different viewpoint.  Ultiarjan was hoping he could get this to work by setting the nozzle width different from the line width.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Guest

[esteban-pacheco 33]

 

Ultiarjan wants to increase flow to make things watertight.

 

well i think is a good idea to be able to somehow overextrude for bottom, top surfaces... (i dont know difficult is to inplement and write such Options in the Software), im having a hard time when i Need to do smth watertight, because due an strange reason the bottom and top surfaces are not completely closed...

[ultiarjan 1,223]

 

 

Not if it would set the distance based on the nozzle size in the .jsor file ... as I would like it to be ..

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Could you try to explain what the expected behaviour is compared to what happens?

 

Ultiarjan wants to increase flow to make things watertight.  but different increases for different parts of the cup.  So he thinks of it as printing 1mm lines with a .8mm nozzle and lines separated by .8mm such that they overlap (watertight).  Other's may call this "flow=120%".  It's the same thing but from different viewpoint.  Ultiarjan was hoping he could get this to work by setting the nozzle width different from the line width.

 

Indead, but for now i'm just tring to understand how it's setup in the new cura, are nozzle size (.json file) and line width doing exactly the same thing yes or no ?

And indead I think it could be a good idea if the nozzle size to only determines the distance between the paths the extruder follows, and the line width (or flow) to over/under extrude.

[gr5 2,177]

And indead I think it could be a good idea if the nozzle size to only determines the distance between the paths the extruder follows, and the line width (or flow) to over/under extrude.

 

You could design Cura to do it either way and either way would be valid but I prefer "line width" to affect both the width and the spacing. And "flow" to allow you to over/under extrude.