Material cost tools plugin

[ahoeben 2,011]

I have made a small plugin for Cura that will let you export material cost information for a list of materials to a CSV file. This file can be easily edited in a spreadsheet application, shared with other users, and imported back into Cura.

 

Price per roll and weight per roll information is not included with the XML file that defines a material in Cura; prices vary country-to-country and probably retailer-to-retailer too, and a single material may be available in different spool-sizes but still print with the same print settings. However, this leaves the material costing in Cura with a bit of a gap that a material manufacturer can not easily pass price information to its customers. With this plugin, they can.

 

The plugin is available from the Marketplace in Cura. Some more information can be found here:

https://marketplace.ultimaker.com/app/cura/plugins/fieldofview/MaterialCostTools

 

The source of the plugin is available here:

https://github.com/fieldOfView/Cura-MaterialCostTools

 

Issues and feature requests can be posted here, or on the github issue queue for the plugin:

https://github.com/fieldOfView/Cura-MaterialCostTools/issues

 

 

 

[yzorg 9]

do you have a tutorial on how to use the plugin? i couldn't figure it out by my self?

[ahoeben 2,011]

You export data into a CSV file, which you can open in a spreadsheet application. Only editing the weight per spool and cost per spool is supported when importing the edited CSV file back into the plugin.

[yzorg 9]

when i click export in the plugin, i get a empty csv sheet.

so i dont know how to start.

[ahoeben 2,011]

Which export option do you use?

[HyperionHelios 0]

Is it possible to change the currency? I tried to change € to $ on the first line of the .csv and then re-import and that didn't appear to work.

[ahoeben 2,011]

The plugin takes the currency from Cura (as set in the General preferences). If the currency specified in the csv file and in Cura does not match, the plugin will tell you so and (at this point) won't import the values. I have considered adding currency conversion in a future version, but sofar other projects have been more important.

[EnderGamerCubed 0]

How would I set it up so that its 11 cents per gram of generic PLA?

[ahoeben 2,011]

You don't need the plugin for that.

 

In the Materials pane of the preferences, you enter how much material (in Kg) you have on a spool and what a spool costs you. So if you enter you have spools that have 1 Kg of material, and each spool costs you 110 (dollar? euro?), then the material costs you 11 cents per gram. (Quite the expensive PLA!)

 

What the plugin will let you do is make changes like this for lots of materials in a spreadsheet and import that back into Cura, instead of filling this in material by material in the Materials preference.

Edited April 18, 2023 by ahoeben