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


SandervG

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

Tickets that aren't updated in 12 weeks go to a bucket where they stay for 4 weeks before they will be closed.

It would be nice if community contributors could see what's in those buckets, so endangered issues can be adopted. It has happened before...

That is a good idea, but the connection between Jira and Github is manually at the moment. Let me think about that.

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

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.

I don't see Cura as a modelling tool. But it is doable to do this with plugins. I've made a sort of working cutting tool that could cut models on the build plate by dragging a plane.

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

Concerning the discarded features which are placed in the after-12-weeks-bucket: What do you think of a kind of poll where people could vote on such features? Of course with no guarantee that the "winner" is going to be implemented. I have the impression that there are a few pearls among that closed features which may have suffered just from everybody thinking "ah - that's a nice idea" but without making an according remark.

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

    '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.'

    I think some form of preference / setting / machine saving to the cloud (tied to an account) would be nice. Being able to "deploy" pre-fixed settings & machines to a group of computers is also a request we've had from universities & schools.

    As for moving everything to the cloud, i'm not a big fan. If there is no need to move something to the cloud, you shouldn't do it. Software should be usable offline (I have a bit of a pet peeve with always online software)

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

    Concerning the discarded features which are placed in the after-12-weeks-bucket: What do you think of a kind of poll where people could vote on such features? Of course with no guarantee that the "winner" is going to be implemented. I have the impression that there are a few pearls among that closed features which may have suffered just from everybody thinking "ah - that's a nice idea" but without making an according remark.

    Just to be clear, when I remove items from our backlog, for me that doesn't mean that we never are going to do/solve this. Only that we think we won't be doing this in the next 6 months or so. If a ticket get's closed feel free to fix it yourself and we would be more that happy to review and merge your pull request.

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

    What is the idea behind the relatively short periods between Cura releases? Other slicers are updated less frequently with new features and just get bugfix updates in short sequence.

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

    First, kudos on Cura, it is a powerful slicer and improves with every release.  However, if I had one wish for an improvement it would be without a doubt the management of profiles.  Perhaps I do not fully understand the intended way or workflow to use with profiles, but they seem to leave a lot of room for improvement.  I supposed before the UM3 this was less of an issue, but with multi-material printers you have to have a different profile for every permutation of materials.  For example, you have to have one profile for a material in extruder 1 and another if that same material is in extruder 2.  The settings for the exact same material are now in 2 places.  Now multiply that by every material and permutation and things get out of hand.  If you need to tweak a parameter, you have to make sure you change it across all those profiles.  I'd rather see the profiles updated to something similar to an object-oriented design practice where the materials stand on their own and are independent of the profile.  Then in a profile, the material is assigned to an extruder slot (1/2).  (Print cores and global parameters like build plate temp would also be separate and then assigned to an extruder slot (1/2) in the same way).  In this way, profiles would be nothing but a top level container of the classes/groups.  And if you changed a material property, it would be updated across all profiles because the profiles all reference the same thing.

    This is already the case :) We have a huge number of types of profiles, which are used in a stack like fashion; user, quality_changes, quality, material, variant, definition_changes and definition.

    If a user changes a setting, it's put in the user container. If the user decides to make a profile, it's moved into the quality_changes (so "update profile" actually moves settings from user into quality_changes).

    For the UM3 we have quality profiles based on the material. So if someone changes the material from PLA to ABS, we switch out to another quality, but with the same type (so if it was normal pla, we switch to normal ABS). The quality_changes profile is tied to the type, so that remains in place.

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

    Concerning the discarded features which are placed in the after-12-weeks-bucket: What do you think of a kind of poll where people could vote on such features? Of course with no guarantee that the "winner" is going to be implemented. I have the impression that there are a few pearls among that closed features which may have suffered just from everybody thinking "ah - that's a nice idea" but without making an according remark.

    Just to be clear, when I remove items from our backlog, for me that doesn't mean that we never are going to do/solve this. Only that we think we won't be doing this in the next 6 months or so. If a ticket get's closed feel free to fix it yourself and we would be more that happy to review and merge your pull request.

    I think a poll of these isn't a bad idea. because sometimes we endure some issues just to get on with printing and then it becomes the norm for those users.

    It might help with seeing if an issue is still an issue.

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

    Afaik documentation of Cura and coding are not done by the same people at Ultimaker (correct me if I'm wrong, please). But maybe you can comment on the timeline that is realistic to have also less known features documented in the same way as the main features are (aka online manual). I think e.g. the support manipulation settings were already mentioned but by far not everybody is familiar with its existence as it is not displayed by default and has to be accessed through the by-object-settings.

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

    What is the idea behind the relatively short periods between Cura releases? Other slicers are updated less frequently with new features and just get bugfix updates in short sequence.

    I personally think that 8 weeks is a very long period of time, I can't really remember what I did 8 weeks ago :)

    Apart from that the short releases make it possible for us to adapt very fast to new ideas or challenges, it also shows where our internal bottlenecks are. This way we can put our energy into solving these bottlenecks so we can deliver more value each release.

    And forcing ourselves to take 'small' steps and releasing gives us the ability to constantly test our assumptions what people will want. We don't go and build some cool feature for over a year only to discover that nobody out there really needs it.

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

    Afaik documentation of Cura and coding are not done by the same people at Ultimaker (correct me if I'm wrong, please). But maybe you can comment on the timeline that is realistic to have also less known features documented in the same way as the main features are (aka online manual). I think e.g. the support manipulation settings were already mentioned but by far not everybody is familiar with its existence as it is not displayed by default and has to be accessed through the by-object-settings.

    If I understand your question correctly, the fast iteration cycle does not make it easy to write manuals and documentation because they are easily outdated.

    We are putting more and more effort in making screencasts which can be made relatively fast and are very informing. These should allow us to explain more features which may live in the shadow today. Although I am not directly in the team that coordinates this, if you would like to see some features explained I would be happy to put in a good word for it :)

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

    90 minutes have past, pfew that went fast!

    I would like to thank everyone who contributed and asked their questions. Hopefully all of them were answered. @Nallath and @Msuurmond will keep a close eye on this thread for the next few days in case any late followup questions come in, in case you had to work late, sleep in or it was just an inconvenient timeslot all together.

    If you have any feedback regarding this 'Ask Me Anything' I would be happy to hear from you! If you have an idea who you would like to ask questions to next, let me know in this thread! Thank you all, and have a great day!

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

    Afaik documentation of Cura and coding are not done by the same people at Ultimaker (correct me if I'm wrong, please). But maybe you can comment on the timeline that is realistic to have also less known features documented in the same way as the main features are (aka online manual). I think e.g. the support manipulation settings were already mentioned but by far not everybody is familiar with its existence as it is not displayed by default and has to be accessed through the by-object-settings.

    If I understand your question correctly, the fast iteration cycle does not make it easy to write manuals and documentation because they are easily outdated.

    We are putting more and more effort in making screencasts which can be made relatively fast and are very informing. These should allow us to explain more features which may live in the shadow today. Although I am not directly in the team that coordinates this, if you would like to see some features explained I would be happy to put in a good word for it :)

    It's not outdated but a bit rudimentary in terms of all the cool features which already exist in Cura but which just have been mentioned once in the release notes and people quickly forget about them (aka "coding features to find out nobody uses it").

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

    so what cyber security features should i know about & what do you plan on the future of ultimaker & cybersecurity

    & what tools are & will be in place to detect,track,& trace hackers of anything to do with anything assocaited with ultimaker & its products & what should i know if my ultimaker is hacked or its services & how your prepared for that

    whats the bitage of your security encyption

    but i would also request a anti virus partnership with you & anything assocaited wih ultimaker & does that currently exist & speaking of all of this what do you think you could do diferrently in despite of all of this

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

    part 2 of my what I'm asking

    would you be intrested in asking cura development to start to include better features like remeshing

    but also to include auto save for everything assocaited with ultimaker cura & youmagine [/b] [b/] , including settings, models, profiles ,etc but also a way to allow profiles in future devlopements would that be of your interests into the future development to carry that out

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

    First, kudos on Cura, it is a powerful slicer and improves with every release.  However, if I had one wish for an improvement it would be without a doubt the management of profiles.  Perhaps I do not fully understand the intended way or workflow to use with profiles, but they seem to leave a lot of room for improvement.  I supposed before the UM3 this was less of an issue, but with multi-material printers you have to have a different profile for every permutation of materials.  For example, you have to have one profile for a material in extruder 1 and another if that same material is in extruder 2.  The settings for the exact same material are now in 2 places.  Now multiply that by every material and permutation and things get out of hand.  If you need to tweak a parameter, you have to make sure you change it across all those profiles.  I'd rather see the profiles updated to something similar to an object-oriented design practice where the materials stand on their own and are independent of the profile.  Then in a profile, the material is assigned to an extruder slot (1/2).  (Print cores and global parameters like build plate temp would also be separate and then assigned to an extruder slot (1/2) in the same way).  In this way, profiles would be nothing but a top level container of the classes/groups.  And if you changed a material property, it would be updated across all profiles because the profiles all reference the same thing.

    This is already the case :)We have a huge number of types of profiles, which are used in a stack like fashion; user, quality_changes, quality, material, variant, definition_changes and definition.

    If a user changes a setting, it's put in the user container. If the user decides to make a profile, it's moved into the quality_changes (so "update profile" actually moves settings from user into quality_changes).

    For the UM3 we have quality profiles based on the material. So if someone changes the material from PLA to ABS, we switch out to another quality, but with the same type (so if it was normal pla, we switch to normal ABS). The quality_changes profile is tied to the type, so that remains in place.

    It is not the case. Perhaps I didn't explain it well enough to make clear what I meant. As an example, if you change the "Material" under the tab for an extruder, as far as I can tell, it does not change settings under "Material." It does not update the printing temperature, it does not update the filament diameter, et cetera. (It is used for color, cost, et cetera, sure, but materials are more than that.) Which is why you have to re-enter all the same information for each profile that uses this material. If I have a PLA-PVA profile and a PLA-PLA (say for multi colors) profile, then I have to enter the print temps, filament diameter, et cetera for PLA three times, even though it is the same exact information. If I find I need to change the retraction by a millimeter then I have to do it in 3 places.

    This is very different from pushing settings from "user" to "quality_changes" when "update profile" is pressed. That is just moving/copying a block of data from one place to another. I'm speaking of how those blocks of data are fundamentally organized.

    The "huge number of profiles," as you say, is exactly the problem. If how profiles are handled was re-thought, you could cut down the number of profiles, or at a minimum, make them a lot easier to manage by reducing the amount of duplication.

    I understand the how and why it got built this way, and I do appreciate the number of settings and their relationships make this difficult to design, but this problem is only going to get worse as more material types are developed, Cura features added, new print cores are developed, et cetera.

    I can put together a small demonstration if you are willing to review it.

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

    Does the same team deal with UM2 and UM2+ software?

    I would like to see the firmware change according to Cura. Currently temp, nozzle, retraction etc is set by the printer and Cura is ignored.

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

    better yet do a high key presentation & then let the community get its say on what it thinks, I do so much for 3dprinting so it can thrive I don't yet do any of this for profit though I am trying to get into a healthcare contest but I'm currently tight lipped on what I am presenting to that contest in particular the one from Windsor Essex county in Ontario Canada as well as links to Detroit

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

    Does the same team deal with UM2 and UM2+ software?

    I would like to see the firmware change according to Cura.  Currently temp, nozzle, retraction etc is set by the printer and Cura is ignored.

    You can make Cura override UM2+ settings by selecting RepRap GCODE flavor in the machine settings of the UM2+ in Cura.

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

    '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.'

    I think some form of preference / setting / machine saving to the cloud (tied to an account) would be nice. Being able to "deploy" pre-fixed settings & machines to a group of computers is also a request we've had from universities & schools.

    As for moving everything to the cloud, i'm not a big fan. If there is no need to move something to the cloud, you shouldn't do it. Software should be usable offline (I have a bit of a pet peeve with always online software)

    not a fan of cloud based software but syncing profiles and settings via fe Dropbox would be great.
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    Posted · October 18th 4:30pm (CEST). CURA AMA!

    First, kudos on Cura, it is a powerful slicer and improves with every release.  However, if I had one wish for an improvement it would be without a doubt the management of profiles.  Perhaps I do not fully understand the intended way or workflow to use with profiles, but they seem to leave a lot of room for improvement.  I supposed before the UM3 this was less of an issue, but with multi-material printers you have to have a different profile for every permutation of materials.  For example, you have to have one profile for a material in extruder 1 and another if that same material is in extruder 2.  The settings for the exact same material are now in 2 places.  Now multiply that by every material and permutation and things get out of hand.  If you need to tweak a parameter, you have to make sure you change it across all those profiles.  I'd rather see the profiles updated to something similar to an object-oriented design practice where the materials stand on their own and are independent of the profile.  Then in a profile, the material is assigned to an extruder slot (1/2).  (Print cores and global parameters like build plate temp would also be separate and then assigned to an extruder slot (1/2) in the same way).  In this way, profiles would be nothing but a top level container of the classes/groups.  And if you changed a material property, it would be updated across all profiles because the profiles all reference the same thing.

    This is already the case :)We have a huge number of types of profiles, which are used in a stack like fashion; user, quality_changes, quality, material, variant, definition_changes and definition.

    If a user changes a setting, it's put in the user container. If the user decides to make a profile, it's moved into the quality_changes (so "update profile" actually moves settings from user into quality_changes).

    For the UM3 we have quality profiles based on the material. So if someone changes the material from PLA to ABS, we switch out to another quality, but with the same type (so if it was normal pla, we switch to normal ABS). The quality_changes profile is tied to the type, so that remains in place.

    It is not the case.  Perhaps I didn't explain it well enough to make clear what I meant.  As an example, if you change the "Material" under the tab for an extruder, as far as I can tell, it does not change settings under "Material."  It does not update the printing temperature, it does not update the filament diameter, et cetera.  (It is used for color, cost, et cetera, sure, but materials are more than that.)  Which is why you have to re-enter all the same information for each profile that uses this material.  If I have a PLA-PVA profile and a PLA-PLA (say for multi colors) profile, then I have to enter the print temps, filament diameter, et cetera for PLA three times, even though it is the same exact information.  If I find I need to change the retraction by a millimeter then I have to do it in 3 places.

    This is very different from pushing settings from "user" to "quality_changes" when "update profile" is pressed.  That is just moving/copying a block of data from one place to another.  I'm speaking of how those blocks of data are fundamentally organized.

    The "huge number of profiles," as you say, is exactly the problem.  If how profiles are handled was re-thought, you could cut down the number of profiles, or at a minimum, make them a lot easier to manage by reducing the amount of duplication.

    I understand the how and why it got built this way, and I do appreciate the number of settings and their relationships make this difficult to design, but this problem is only going to get worse as more material types are developed, Cura features added, new print cores are developed, et cetera.

    I can put together a small demonstration if you are willing to review it.

    By all means, as I don't understand what the difference is. What you describe is what we have as far as I can tell.

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

    so what cyber security features should i know about & what do you plan on the future of ultimaker & cybersecurity

    Uh. Fairly little. We don't do much with the cloud or internet connection. What little data we sent is obviously done with HTTPS and can always be opted out (Cura sends settings if you save slice data, but we have no idea who sliced it or what they sliced, just how it was sliced.)

    Security was also a reason why we didn't have a remote acces system for the UM3; It's damn hard to properly do this. Security is one of those things you only get one shot at, so if you do something like this, do it right.

    Our best defence is not being connected in the first place.

    what tools are & will be in place to detect,track,& trace hackers of anything to do with anything assocaited with ultimaker & its products & what should i know if my ultimaker is hacked or its services & how your prepared for that

    Well if your UM is hacked, it's because you actively made steps to open it up to the internet. Depending on how well (or poorly) you did this, there are security risks. As it's not something that we provide you with, handling the security is then also up to you.

    but i would also request a anti virus partnership with you & anything assocaited wih ultimaker & does that currently exist

    I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. We send Cura to major virus scanners to be checked before hand, but we mostly do that due to not being marked as a virus.

    & speaking of all of this what do you think you could do diferrently in despite of all of this

    I'm pretty sure that we will move toward more connected systems in the future, but I think we should do that slowly and carefully, regardless of the amount of pressure that costumers might put on it. People tend to want things yesterday, but it's my responsibility to give them what they want while taking care of them (and protecting them against risks they might not know about).

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

    Does the same team deal with UM2 and UM2+ software?

    I would like to see the firmware change according to Cura.  Currently temp, nozzle, retraction etc is set by the printer and Cura is ignored.

    Team is perhaps a big word for the um2 and UM2+ firmware. Its one developer that does that on the side.

    The whole "machine sets the temp, retraction, etc" was a mistake that we made for the um2. We believed (wrongly!) that you could generate machine paths without knowing the material and that the machine would be able to set material specific settings. This is such a fundamental thing that we can't retroactively change that for those machines. It is something that we changed for the UM3, so it won't be an issue when we are moving forward.

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

    part 2 of my what I'm asking

    would you be intrested in asking cura development to start to include better features like remeshing

    but also to include auto save for everything assocaited with ultimaker cura & youmagine [/b] [b/] , including settings, models, profiles ,etc but also a way to allow profiles in future devlopements would that be of your interests into the future development to carry that out

    Remeshing is of course a thing that's interesting. Cura 3.0.3 has a third party tool to help with that. As fixing & remeshing is a pretty darn hard problem, i don't think that Ultimaker is going to fix that by itself. But we definitely welcome other parties to do this (case in point, the plugin).

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

    better yet do a high key presentation & then let the community get its say on what it thinks, I do so much for 3dprinting so it can thrive I don't yet do any of this for profit though I am trying to get into a healthcare contest but I'm currently tight lipped on what I am presenting to that contest in particular the one from Windsor Essex county in Ontario Canada as well as links to Detroit

    Well, Ultimaker is always looking for more people, especially engineers. Cura is also open for paid plugins now, so i think there will be plenty of opportunities to make a living with 3D printing. I've been doing exactly that for the past 5 years!

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