Cura - All at once/one at a time?

[illuminarti 18]

This is primarily a question for Daid... I'm trying to understand the behavior I'm seeing in Cura 13.11, regarding when it prints pieces all at once versus one at a time?

I know about the gantry height setting, but even when I have the gantry height set, it's printing several small pieces all at the same time, not layer-by-layer, even though there's plenty of space to print them one by one.

As it happens, that's what I want, for layer cooling purposes, but I'm curious if there's some additional logic at play in the latest Cura, or if it's just a bug?

I'm thinking it may be related to using the multiply setting, and/or loading several STL's at once, rather than one-by-one, causing it to print all at once, but I can't quite pin it down.

 

[Daid 306]

All-at-once or one-at-a-time mostly depends on gantry height. There is a case in there which makes it do "all-at-once" if it cannot figure out the printing order, but I think that is an impossible case...

 

[illuminarti 18]

It's hard to reproduce but it does get it wrong sometimes... I just tried loading a small part - roughly 20 x 8 x 15 mm and then used multiply to get a total of four objects. It placed them in a straight line one behind the other, and printed them all at once.

Coming back to it now, and trying again, it arranges them in a 2 x 2 grid, and prints them one at a time. No change in settings or gantry height in between.

Since there is a valid case for printing small parts all at once in order to help with layer cooling, it would be really nice if there was an 'all at once' option that we could toggle, rather than having to fudge the gantry height.

 

[joergen 2]

so, just as a silly question, and since I am not using cura often, there is no toggle anymore?

 

[illuminarti 18]

No, indeed not.

 

[Daid 306]

On my personal "wishlist/todo-list" there is:

** Beter handling of multi-object-prints, selection between "all at once" and "one at a time", make it clear if "one at a time" is working or that is switched to "all at once" for a reason. Also change the object boundary box depending on this selection so you can tigher pack the "all at once" prints.

 

[christian-zuercher 0]

I Beleive it's a useful Feature if YOu can select it manually. I had some Parts to print with a small Detail and it ceme out bad. The Reason was that it spend too much Time with the Detail which warmed up to much. If You can set it to prtint all at the same Time, it has enough Time to coole down. I solved this by replicating the Item in OpenSCAD.

 

[hp-65 4]

On my personal "wishlist/todo-list" there is:

** Beter handling of multi-object-prints, selection between "all at once" and "one at a time", make it clear if "one at a time" is working or that is switched to "all at once"

 

?

You already had this "better handling" built in, but removed it...

 

[gr5 2,167]

You already had this "better handling" built in, but removed it..

 

No. Better than that also!

 

[Daid 306]

?

You already had this "better handling" built in, but removed it...

 

Back in 12.xx when the project planner was a separate tool this was possible. From 13.06 the project planner was completely rebuild in it's current form, which made it much easier to use. (Before this the order in which things where printed had to be set by the user) the result was that this feature got lost during the re-write.