Adaptive layers does not work with multiple items

[hoegge 6]

When you enable adaptive layers with more than one item on the bed, the slicing stops at the height of the lowest item - i.e. the following part of the heighest item is not printed

 

[ctbeke 133]

Thanks for reporting! We're aware of the limitations of adaptive layers (hence it's experimental status). As it's kind of designed to only work with 1 model at a time (otherwise the layers would be weird for the other models), I'm not sure if we'll make it work with multiple models. Of course there should be some UI feedback if that's the case. We'll discuss this internally and see how to improve the feature.

[hoegge 6]

Why shouldn't it work just fine? The amount of near to horizontal areas should be as easy to find multiple models. Of course it might then print to thin layers in one model when not needed but that is the same as in a single model, where some parts in the same horizontal layer needs fine details and some don't. Just treat the full plate / bed as one model and then it is up to the user to tweak and review the result of the calculation and determine if it looks good, I'd say. It would at least be better than now, where you get a ruined wasted print of all items but one several hours later.

Edited February 24, 2018 by hoegge

[ctbeke 133]

Well, the slicing would work fine and it would produce printable G-code, but the print quality wouldn't be what users expect from it. We always try to keep print quality high when building features.

[prb4 6]

I would really like to use the adaptive layer heights on my prints but to do so it would need to work with multiple different models on the bed.

 

I would expect the layer heights on one model to be different to the layer heights on another model.

I could accept that it perhaps doesn't work optimally in this situation.

 

For example, if the layer height was allowed to vary between 0.2 and 0.05 mm.

But the step change was limited to 0.025 mm.

i.e, the only available steps were, 0.05, 0.075, 0.1, 0.125, 0.15, 0.175, 0.2.

 

In this way the layer height are always multiples of each other and I would expect it to be much easier to work out which model to print at which height at any given layer.

 

I appreciate it is much easier to ask for a feature like this than to implement, however I would find it very useful and it would improve the print quality a lot without wasting lots of time unnecessarily.

 

Thanks

 

[catohagen 41]

It will work on multiple models if Cura slices each model seperately, then in the gcode the nozzle needs to lift up abit after each layer before moving to the other model, so for example on model 1 the current Z value is 50.125 and the next layer on model 2 is 50.105, the nozzle must move to the startpoint on model 2 and lower nozzle to 50.105.

 

Then next layer on model 1 is 50.140, so while nozzle is still over model 2, it lifts nozzle up before moving to model 1.

 

 

[kmanstudios 1,120]

Since this is building objects layer by layer, all objects on the buildplate have to build at the same level. While it is feasible to be able to program something that could take into count things like that (say print two 0.1mm layers here and then a 0.2mm layer on the next model to keep them even) I wonder how it would impact slicing time.

 

If all models are the same height, then it will slice all the models since it will slice to the height of the lowest model. So, that is not so bad.

 

It will also fail if there are intersections of models. But as long as there is no touching of walls, it will do fine with somethings such as making one object hollow to fill with weights in a larger model.

 

A UI suggestion would be to have a minimal height number and a maximum height number that could act like gates or limits on how small or large a layer would be.

Edited February 26, 2018 by kmanstudios