Cura Script Tutorials?

[Psyonic 1]

Can anyone point me at some tutorials for the scripts in Cura? Can't seem to find anything out there in the ether! Just the basics of what all the Cura specific stuff is what I'm looking for.

Particularly, what the hell does the line

"version": N,

mean?? I've found a script example that has "1" as the version but it doesn't work unless I change it to "2"? I thought it would be version tracking for the script itself but obviously I'm wrong!

Edited September 4, 2018 by Psyonic

[Nicolinux 288]

Hi,

 

the version string is just part of the meta data. I don't know if this is internally used to track changes but I would assume that it is expected to bump up this number when you submit a new plugin update.

 

As for resources for scripts and plugins I guess the starting point would be here:

https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/wiki/Plugin-Directory

 

And the wiki:

https://github.com/Ultimaker/Uranium/wiki/Creating-plugins

[Psyonic 1]

Thanks @Nicolinux. The version thing was killing me! Still don't know the reason for it. I'm really looking for the structure of Cura scripts, like is "data" what the script is run against, i.e. the entire gcode? And any other real basics. Not sure I'm ready to write a full-blown plugin yet, just want to get a basic script working. But I'm making some headway now.

Thanks again!

[nallath 1,124]

The version is actually an API version. Sometimes we make internal (breaking) changes. We try to avoid them, but sometimes we're forced to do it (because previous assumptions of us have been proven wrong, or keeping the API the same would just result in unmaintainable or hard to implement code).

 

Also; Plugins are completely different from scripts. The scripts are what is used by the post-processing plugin (and are run against the entire g-code).

 

Plugins can do much, much more than scripts. With a plugin, it's possible to change what slicer is actually being used, change rendering on the screen, add new tools, add new filetypes that can be written/read or even change workflows. This makes them much more powerful, but also harder to actually work with.
 

Edited September 5, 2018 by nallath

[Psyonic 1]

Thanks @nallath. Yeah, I'm not really interested in creating a plugin, just a script to do simple changes to the gcode.

Do you know where I could find some info on the structure of the scripts?
Currently I'm just working on the assumption that

def execute(self, data):
        return [self._some_other_method()]

is required and does that actual processing of the gcode, and that "data" is actually the entire gcode to be processed, but this is just an assumption as I can't seem to find any detailed information or tutorials.

I'm also not very familiar with python, but I'm getting used to it...

[ahoeben 2,010]

Data is a List (the Python name for array) of gcode layer data. The first item of the list is the preamble (data that CuraEngine adds in front of the start gcode), followed by the start gcode, then each layer and finally the end gcode. Your execute method should return the processed data, which has the same structure and is handed to the next script or to the gcode writer.

[Psyonic 1]

Thank you @ahoeben!! Things make a LOT more sense now! I was running it like it was one, long string, searching for "LAYER:" to modify at those points. Thank you!! This makes the results I was getting make a lot more sense!!