October 18th 4:30pm (CEST). CURA AMA!

[nallath 1,120]

How many easter eggs are there in the Ultimaker (3)? Can you give a slight clue on how/where to find it?

 

One is only reachable on a certain date.

One requires an extra bit of hardware.

[SandervG 1,521]

sorry what I meant was; it was mentioned that people can develop their own plugin or mess around with the software to help achieve features the are looking for in the slicer.  And I was wondering how I could learn this.  I am assuming that understanding Python would be one thing, but I would like to be able to do some creative work to see if I can achieve what I want.

If you actually want to code, you need to understand python. If you only want to change how the UI and UX looks like, you should have a look at the .qml files that are shipped with cura (and the theme.json file). Those describe how the UI looks.

But we do need more resources on how to get started with developing for Cura. I'd love to have more people outside of Ultimaker to work with. Diversity will lead to a better overall product (both for Ultimaker and for those with other printers).

I can also pitch in on this one, on the content side of Ultimaker we are also working on putting some documentation together that should give more insight in this process. Like what is a plugin, what type of plugins can be made, how do they work in Cura, do you submit a plugin if you made one, etc.

[nallath 1,120]

How many easter eggs are there in the Ultimaker (3)? Can you give a slight clue on how/where to find it?

None!! Especially not on talk like a pirate day

Cura has no easter eggs what so ever. Especially not on talk like a pirate day.

[rebekah_harper 60]

What's the address ??

bridging settings speed, infill and orientation etc...

[flowalistik 181]

We received another question, following the voice assistant. Audible equipment is usually used to help the disabled, in this case people with bad or no eye sight. 3D printing is no stranger to humanitarian aid, through organisations like e-nable and printing objects with braille. Which disability do you think could profit significantly with the help of 3D printing?

I asked the Morgan Freeman voice question because of this. Today I visited a R&D department where they test electrical appliances adapted for visually impaired people. The oven talked, literally.

Also, when you think of people using Cura, who do you imagine using it? New users or super pro makers? I see a BIG difference between the basic mode (very little options) and the advanced mode (infinite settings). Is it in your plans to make an intermediate mode?

[Msuurmond 28]

What are your favourite past-times while Cura is launching?

See if the UltiBot is moving it's eyes when I hover on it with the mouse.

[SandervG 1,521]

Another question I have seen resonating through the community for some time; Some users like to experiment but sometimes it is difficult to see which settings influence what and you are not always sure that the settings you enter in Cura are exactly what will happen on your Ultimaker. Are there any plans to include something like an ‘engineering profile’, where settings don't influence each other that much, and it does not care about 'output' but processing the entered values?

[nallath 1,120]

We received another question, following the voice assistant. Audible equipment is usually used to help the disabled, in this case people with bad or no eye sight. 3D printing is no stranger to humanitarian aid, through organisations like e-nable and printing objects with braille. Which disability do you think could profit significantly with the help of 3D printing?

I think a lot of them could benefit from it. You already named a few, but i've myself already used it to repair the wheelchair of my niece (an arm rest had broken off and it would have costed a few hundred euro and weeks to fix it. I could do it in one day for a few euro)

[nallath 1,120]

Also, when you think of people using Cura, who do you imagine using it? New users or super pro makers? I see a BIG difference between the basic mode (very little options) and the advanced mode (infinite settings). Is it in your plans to make an intermediate mode?

I think the visibility presets will help greatly with this. That way we can have a gradient in what settings you have visible (and we can give hints regarding what settings we view as super advanced vs intermediate)

[Nicolinux 288]

I agree with Rebekah that manual supports are sometimes better than automatic ones. And that's their strength. How many times did I fiddled endlessly with slicing options just to try to get rid of some parts of the support structure? I wish I could have been able to select it and remove it by hand. I wouldn't care if it is hard to use at first because the alternative is to accept the automatic supports which can't never account for every situation.

Did you have in mind to add manual supports? I think will be a great feauture in particular will bring back a lot of users from S3D to use again and more Cura, and the Multiple Processes would be another interesting feature to add.

Like @nallath said Manual Support is something that is difficult to create UX wise. Apart from that I don't think people want to do manual support. They have to do it because automatic support isn't up to par (and we still can't print in mid-air).

I want us to have auto-support that is better than manual support. That might be very difficult to achieve, but I think that if we take small steps that constantly improve our auto support (like the gradual infill in 2.7), we will get there.

[Msuurmond 28]

We received another question, following the voice assistant. Audible equipment is usually used to help the disabled, in this case people with bad or no eye sight. 3D printing is no stranger to humanitarian aid, through organisations like e-nable and printing objects with braille. Which disability do you think could profit significantly with the help of 3D printing?

Also, when you think of people using Cura, who do you imagine using it? New users or super pro makers? I see a BIG difference between the basic mode (very little options) and the advanced mode (infinite settings). Is it in your plans to make an intermediate mode?

The last few sprints we focused on making Cura easier to use for our beginning users, users that are more focussed on the end print that comes out of the printer. I the near future we want to make it easier for the pro users to tweak and add things to Cura from which the beginners and intermediates will also benefit.

If you have suggestions, let us know!

[nallath 1,120]

Another question I have seen resonating through the community for some time; Some users like to experiment but sometimes it is difficult to see which settings influence what and you are not always sure that the settings you enter in Cura are exactly what will happen on your Ultimaker. Are there any plans to include something like an ‘engineering profile’, where settings don't influence each other that much, and it does not care about 'output' but processing the entered values?

This is something you could already make if you wanted to. I've written a script some time ago that puts all flattened settings into the user changes. That way it won't ever do auto magically setting calculation. But it's not for the faint of heart and there is no guarantee that it won't mess up your prints (as it probably will mess it up)

[SandervG 1,521]

@Nallath, can you explain in a few sentences what 'Anti overhang mesh' is? @Rebekah_Harper might be interested too

[rebekah_harper 60]

We received another question, following the voice assistant. Audible equipment is usually used to help the disabled, in this case people with bad or no eye sight. 3D printing is no stranger to humanitarian aid, through organisations like e-nable and printing objects with braille. Which disability do you think could profit significantly with the help of 3D printing?

I think a lot of them could benefit from it. You already named a few, but i've myself already used it to repair the wheelchair of my niece (an arm rest had broken off and it would have costed a few hundred euro and weeks to fix it. I could do it in one day for a few euro)

I think that imagination is the only limit.

for the partial to none sighted people aids that make items some easily manipulated or found. For deaf people using color and system to highlight something has happened. for the physically impaired there is already a huge modding culture.

there is no end to the possibilities just the limitation of the means to achieve them

[nallath 1,120]

@Nallath, can you explain in a few sentences what 'Anti overhang mesh' is? @Rebekah_Harper might be interested too

https://ultimaker.com/en/community/35603-support-mesh-anti-overhang-mesh

You can use them to "mark" areas so they won't be supported anymore.

[rebekah_harper 60]

sorry what I meant was; it was mentioned that people can develop their own plugin or mess around with the software to help achieve features the are looking for in the slicer.  And I was wondering how I could learn this.  I am assuming that understanding Python would be one thing, but I would like to be able to do some creative work to see if I can achieve what I want.

If you actually want to code, you need to understand python. If you only want to change how the UI and UX looks like, you should have a look at the .qml files that are shipped with cura (and the theme.json file). Those describe how the UI looks.

But we do need more resources on how to get started with developing for Cura. I'd love to have more people outside of Ultimaker to work with. Diversity will lead to a better overall product (both for Ultimaker and for those with other printers).

that's great. didn't realise I could eventually do some UI design too because this is what I would like to do too.

[nallath 1,120]

FieldOfView (ahoeben) actually started out by suggesting UX changes.

[SandervG 1,521]

I think this question originally came from @neotko, while trying to get a better understanding of the new added plugin structure which is a big focus; Are the plugins for Ultimaker Cura 3 mostly limited to pre- and post-processing?

[nallath 1,120]

I think this question originally came from @neotko, while trying to get a better understanding of the new added plugin structure which is a big focus; Are the plugins for Ultimaker Cura 3 mostly limited to pre- and post-processing?

Far from it! Plugins can actually do things like; Add new tools to manipulate the 3D scene, add new render types (the X-ray view is actually a plugin), add new file types, add new ways to send g-code (both octoprint & the um3 connection stuff are plugins).

[ahoeben 1,948]

There are no easter eggs in Bah Sing Se

[SandervG 1,521]

We received another question, following the voice assistant. Audible equipment is usually used to help the disabled, in this case people with bad or no eye sight. 3D printing is no stranger to humanitarian aid, through organisations like e-nable and printing objects with braille. Which disability do you think could profit significantly with the help of 3D printing?

I think a lot of them could benefit from it. You already named a few, but i've myself already used it to repair the wheelchair of my niece (an arm rest had broken off and it would have costed a few hundred euro and weeks to fix it. I could do it in one day for a few euro)

I think that imagination is the only limit.

for the partial to none sighted people aids that make items some easily manipulated or found. For deaf people using color and system to highlight something has happened. for the physically impaired there is already a huge modding culture.

there is no end to the possibilities just the limitation of the means to achieve them

Reminds me of a usercase I was introduced to this January, where (young) poor sighted people managed to identify their rooms with customized and therefore recognizable doorknobs. They also had a 3D printed floorplan of the building. Before they could mostly walk around the premises under supervision, but this allowed them to expand how far they could walk around independently.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Guest

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

Follow-up question to the "multiple profiles per object": Does this only involve the layer height or will you also include other parameters into that feature so it has the combined functionality of the legacy Cura plugins Swap-At-Z and Tweak-At-Z?

[Nicolinux 288]

Are there any plans to add simple boolean operations on .stl files to Cura? Right now it is mostly a pain to do that in other tools if you don't have the source file for the model.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Guest

[nallath 1,120]

Follow-up question to the "multiple profiles per object": Does this only involve the layer height or will you also include other parameters into that feature so it has the combined functionality of the legacy Cura plugins Swap-At-Z and Tweak-At-Z?

If we can change layer height, it should just as easily (from a technical viewpoint that is) be possible to have other settings. How it will look / work isn't clear just yet.

[SandervG 1,521]

While we still have 15 minutes on the clock, this 'futuristic/visionary' question appeared as well:

'Nowadays most of the software has moved towards the cloud (partially or completely). Is Cura going to get some features related to the cloud? I'd like, for example, to have a Cura Cloud with a personal account where I can save all my machines, settings and profiles, being able to access/share no matter where I am.'