We made it, the New Cura

[gr5 2,172]

Whats the point of auto generating GCODES anyway, its a bad feature, one click after all the tweaking would be much more practical than constant recalculating, even with low priority, its totally unnecessary and more of a burden than a help.

 

You are about the 20th person to complain about this and it turned out that all 19 of the people before you had actually found a bug and didn't realize it. Fixing the bug made them much happier - if it weren't for autoslicing the Cura authors would never have known there was a bug. On my machine autoslicing works great - I can rotate the part, scale the part, change settings all lightning fast with zero delays. If you change something it somehow notifies the slicer which immediately stops slicing and starts over - it's really no big deal when it is working properly. But for you it is not working properly.

There were MANY bugs - for example there was a bug related to certain model SD card readers and depended if your SD card was inserted or not. There were bugs that only affected certain operating systems, bugs related to video drivers, bugs related to virus scanners and so on. They were all eventually fixed but only because of people like you who were really pissed off about the autoslicing feature yet it turned out to be something else more important to fix.

If those bugs weren't fixed the people like you wouldn't realize things like "slicing takes 10 seconds instead of 1 second due to a virus scanner", and so on.

Regarding modifying your copy of cura I think it's pretty easy to just edit the python code as mentioned above. Hopefully someone else will give you more details.

[ahoeben 1,948]

On a standard PC these days over 90% of the CPU is idle. That is a waste of ressources...

 

These days, many people work on a laptop. On a laptop on battery-power, running and rerunning the slicer for every change does affect how long the laptop will operate before the battery runs out. Hence "waste of resources".

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

 

On a standard PC these days over 90% of the CPU is idle. That is a waste of ressources...

 

These days, many people work on a laptop. On a laptop on battery-power, running and rerunning the slicer for every change does affect how long the laptop will operate before the battery runs out. Hence "waste of resources".

 

Well, as the laptop is standing next to the 3D printer which almost certainly runs not on batteries, there should be a power connection somewhere close.

I'm actually with you concerning the re-run of the whole slicing process. I recently suggested that for e.g. an object shift, toolpaths would not have to be recalculated but just translated by the shift distance. The answer I got indicated it's a good amount of work to achieve that...

[nallath 1,120]

It would make a ton of sense if we did that, but the engine structure just doesn't support it. At some point in the future we will probably refactor the entire structure of the engine.

[cloakfiend 995]

Cura can spit out weird files every now and then i admit, but I have no clue how this helps me or why one file takes ages to slice whilst another takes only seconds im sure i've found many bugs, like times when cura decides to print a part of the object somewhere else part into the print, or and unreadable gcode file, but if i do everything slowly, it seems to work. If i rush Cura thats when things might be written badly, especially around the reading and writing stage to the sdcard reader thing. I always go by files size, if my obj is over 1GB then i know it will take ages (hence auto slicing being torture having to wait sometimes over 1 minute or more per operation. i dont know if this is a bug, but i kinda expect it. Should it be faster for these ridicoulsly sized objs? Im not decimationg my models i'm sure i can reduce the size, but if it works, why bother (other than autoslicing stress?) I'll just have to rotate it in Maya to load into Cura wihtout having to rotate it.

[gr5 2,172]

Two things you can do to relieve autoslicing stress:

1) Set your layer slicing height to 2mm temporarily until you get your object positioned properly and you are ready to truly slice. This will slice 10X faster than .2mm slices.

2) Get all your settings perfect before loading the model.

I know - silly workarounds - but still...

[cloakfiend 995]

life is full of work arounds, i've learnt to accept them. I'll most likely do the 2mm thing and try to import my models in a way that they dont needto be rotated in cura, as that wastes time. then the whole scale thing, which is more tricky as its amount of filament dependent. but thanks for the advice. I don't trust myself editing code, I play with enough settings already, and seeing how touchy cura is when under stress, id rather not push it too much. I can handle an occasional anomaly from cura everynow and then but if i changed code, then if anything went wrong i'd be paranoid it was my messing around that did it.

[SkyKorp 6]

@SkyKorp:

 

• Yes, there is no lay flat option yet. UM R&D is working on it afaik. It is expected to appear in a later version.

• Maybe you try to use the percentage? Hint: 100% = 1.0

• On a standard PC these days over 90% of the CPU is idle. That is a waste of ressources...

• Can't comment on that as I haven't used the new version very thoroughly yet. From my experiences with beta test versions I think it's rather a question of the quality of e.g. your graphics card driver.

 

 

[SkyKorp 6]

standard PC these days over 90% of the CPU is idle

It is distracting visually for the user and there are other things I am doing with the computer resources like the CAD system and other tools. It should be a checkbox option for automatic or with button push.

[Blizz 53]

This has been a discussion for quite a while and it's pretty clear that UM will not change its opinion on it. They keep on claiming it is a feature that is very handy for most people and that the amount of people not liking it is very small.

I for one agree with you fully. I'd like to be able to just modify everything to my liking and then "commit" the changes to have the paths recalculated. But I guess we'll have to learn to live with it.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Guest

[nallath 1,120]

Well, we've recently had one good argument why we should disable the auto slicing (eg; Your laptop drains faster). All the other arguments were proven to be moot.

A lot of the arguments had this kind of vibe to them; https://xkcd.com/1172/

We're not adverse to changing things if people want it, but if you will need to argue your case (and we, if we think we are right, will argue ours)

[Blizz 53]

@Nallath, there have been numerous topics about it and each time UM comes with the same answer: "your arguments are moot and it does not cause extra system load".

The fact that - a respectable amount of - people keep bringing it up means that it isn't "moot" for them. For a service company like UM that should be enough argument. It clearly indicates that there is a bunch of customers (sure, it's a minority) for whom it is just not handy/counterintuitive.

And you know what: If the discussion would be about something that is extremely hard to implement I would get it, but it is not, it can literally be solved by adding 1 toggle in the settings that either enables the auto-refresh or shows a "commit & refresh"-button.

Being a developer myself I have been in similar situations more than I care to admit and sometimes its just not about what you think is right, but keeping all your customers happy. Just saying. And that is my argument about it.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Guest

[nallath 1,120]

@Nallath, there have been numerous topics about it and each time UM comes with the same answer: "your arguments are moot and it does not cause extra system load".

The fact that - a respectable amount of - people keep bringing it up means that it isn't "moot" for them. For a service company like UM that should be enough argument.

 

This is exactly why its not moving anywhere. It should not cause system load. If it does, it means that something else is causing it. If I give an easy way out, I help those people, but do not fix the underlying problem.

 

And you know what: If the discussion would be about something that is extremely hard to implement I would get it, but it is not, it can literally be solved by adding 1 toggle in the settings that either enables the auto-refresh or shows a "commit & refresh"-button.

 

It is something that is hard, as it won't allow me to pin down the actual problem! So far we've had multiple major issues that caused Cura to slow down when it started to slice. All of these caused everyone to point their finger at the auto slicing. All of these issues had -nothing- to do with the auto slicing. Correlation does not imply causation.

This is the reason why we don't change it, as the arguments that people have posed against it don't outweigh this. Recently there has been one argument that makes a pretty decent point, but I'm not quite sure if it's good enough reason to implement it.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Guest

[Titus 170]

Another issue I have with the new cura is multi screen setups.

Selecting another machine gives a popup that is half in 1 screen, half in the second, which is not really close to it, making it impossible to read.

Also, it doesnt start full screen(as it was when shut down), but slightly off to right bottom, flowing over in my second screen.

I talked to Arjan(Arjan? ahiemstra on irc) about it and he mentioned how it was not a cura bug but a python bug, can't remember, but quite irritating to be honest

[Blizz 53]

@nallath: I for one am not complaining about Cura's performance. For me the auto path refresh is purely annoying and its behavior is different from what I expect from the application, that is all.

@Titus: Java has a similar issue on Macs now and oracle is refusing to fix it. This is currently forcing me to stick to the previous version of my code editor. Not everything can be fixed by modifying the application itself I guess.

[nallath 1,120]

We do support fullscreen for the next version. Not sure if we have enough control to save the full window state.

[Blizz 53]

I really don't get that new Cura version... 1 piece: 12 minutes. 10 pieces? 2 hours? No not really: 10 hours and 49 minutes eta. Wtf?

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

I really don't get that new Cura version... 1 piece: 12 minutes. 10 pieces? 2 hours? No not really: 10 hours and 49 minutes eta. Wtf?

 

Seems a bit too much. To be honest, multiplication of objects (and especially deleting an object) does not seem to work properly.

But hey, it's a beta...

[Blizz 53]

But hey, it's a beta...

Is it? I mean, functionality wise it definitely seems so, but I can't remember it being released as such.

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

But hey, it's a beta...

Is it? I mean, functionality wise it definitely seems so, but I can't remember it being released as such.

Yes. Just check the URL you are downloading from...

@SandervG: Maybe a clearer separation of stable and beta releases is needed?

[SandervG 1,521]

We have a meeting about that today!

Edited September 7, 2015 by Guest

[nallath 1,120]

I really don't get that new Cura version... 1 piece: 12 minutes. 10 pieces? 2 hours? No not really: 10 hours and 49 minutes eta. Wtf?

That's the engine (which is not a reimplementation). So not really a new cura issue

[KevinMakes 22]

same exact reaction

[SkyKorp 6]

I have been in the CAD/CAM software development business for over 25 years. Before that I wrote slicers and post processors and wrote code at MIT. I am an older guy now and have enjoyed making things again with CAD. I found UM and Cura and love the openness of the code and the community.

However this topic of auto slice or not has me discouraged.

Cura developers, please understand you cannot build the perfect product. Customers will use your products and each person has their own quirks and bugs that are called preferences. The customers are telling you that too many of us have the same preference.

Please reconsider your responses and be brave and imagine how many will applaud the option to choose auto slice or no slice at all. Remember that feedback is like an iceberg,... what you see here on the forums is only the tip.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Guest

[KevinMakes 22]

Random questions I think may fit best here: Are you guys (Ultimaker Head Cheese's) planning on updating the Ultimaker 2 Dual Firmware when the updates come along for the regular firmware?

One thing I have noticed about every electronic device that I have modified at a firmware level is that it is fairly difficult to do...

First of all let me say I love the ability to select any firmware fairly easily from the cura software and whatnot.. but have you considered making a more user-friendly way (gui based)to edit the firmware with options for adding new and or different parts (hardware). Even if it voided any implied warranties, that would definitely put you ahead of the competition as far as customization goes for the type of people who look at a line of code and get queasy...(ME ) and I only had my printer a day before it was in pieces and a week before it was modified and in need of different firmware and I'm going to make this the worlds longest run on sentence because 'murica.