Cura Startup Optimiser plugin needs testers

[ahoeben 2,026]

I am working on another small plugin for Cura.

 

Because there are more and more community members contributing printer profiles to Cura, a lot of configuration files ship with Cura and are loaded into Cura on every start. At present, this has ballooned to around 2000 configuration files that are loaded each time Cura starts up. Once Cura is configured to work with a user's printers, most of the files for other printers are no longer needed.

 

My new plugin lets the user disable loading configuration files for printers that are not currently added to Cura. The caveat is that if you buy a new type of printer, you will have to temporarily restore loading all these files, add the printer to Cura, and reapply the optimization.

 

On my development computer that makes Cura start around 20% faster. I am interested if you see similar numbers.

 

* Download the development snapshot for Cura 4.4 and newer  Edit: use the version linked below instead

* Drop the file onto the buildplate in Cura, as if you are opening a 3d model

* Restart Cura

* Go to Extensions -> Startup Optimiser -> Disable loading unused configuration files

* Restart Cura again; especially the "Loading Machines" stage should pass noticeably quicker

 

Update: the plugin has been released to the Marketplace. Please use that version instead of any version linked in this thread.

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by ahoeben

[DivingDuck 105]

Hi, I had the chance to test it with the 4.6 Beta version and faced a little problem in my Cura installation. After deactivating all not needed profiles (2079 configurations) and a new start of Cura I got attached information. Story about this is, that there was 3mf test file that I opened somewhen last year. Later on, I deleted the printer configuration via Cura menu and had not check if all physical files was deleted too. Shit happen...

 

Guess this window isn't driven by your application but maybe there is a better way to delete only this fragments instead asking a user to delete all profiles? E.g. giving a user the option to delete only the profile(s) in question.

 

Loading Cura is a little bit faster 35 instead of 45 sec. I guess, in reality it will be a bit faster (because of this error message)

Restoring all profiles works perfect and everything runs like before the change.

[ahoeben 2,026]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see if I can work around "lingering" configuration files like that.

10 seconds is a nice speedup though, and it is good to know restoring did that: restore to a working setup.

[ahoeben 2,026]

@DivingDuck, your issue should be fixed in this version. Update: Use the version in the Marketplace instead!

 

The configuration should no longer get corrupted by my plugin. Even better, if your Cura configuration was "corrupt", applying the optimization should uncorrupt it. Finally if the configuration ever gets corrupted because of another reason, the plugin now adds a second button which lets you remove just the affected files instead of nuking the whole configuration:

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by ahoeben

[DivingDuck 105]

This are great news.

After deactivating 2093 configurations I had a reduction about 15 sec. Your new addition had removed the corruption of found files. Reverting the changes works too.

During the test one thing came in my mind. Maybe it is good to have an status indicator in your plugin that tells an user that it is active.

Thanks a lot for your effort. Well done.

[ahoeben 2,026]

1 hour ago, DivingDuck said:

Maybe it is good to have an status indicator in your plugin that tells an user that it is active.

 

A checkmark or "bullet" in front of the menuitem could be nice, but Cura does not support that for the Extensions menu. Other than that, I'm not sure how such an indicator would look. It is probably a good idea to put something in the logs about not loading that many containers though.

[DivingDuck 105]

Sorry for my late answer.

I was thinking to find this information in the plugin menu. Something similar to Plugin RawMouse - Show device information window, where I got a little status information when I click a item like Status in your plugin menu. Having this information in the log file is a good point too as this will help when a user forgot about that plugin and ask for help about missing profiles 🙂

[jbernardis 1]

I will definitely give this a try, although from this description it doesn't sound like it optimizes filaments.

 

Over 2000 printer profiles unnecessarily loaded.  That's unbelievable that the developers don't see that as an issue.

[ahoeben 2,026]

The plugin has two main optimisations; not loading the profile files you don’t need, and not loading the non-generic materials. But it also helps with certain broken configurations. It is a bit of a swissarmyknife.

[OUPS65 3]

both optimisations activated.

start now  in 17sec instead of 25sec. 

Super many tks

Philippe

[jbernardis 1]

similar results for me.  I didn't realize that I'd have to choose both optimizations, so it took me 2 passes, but my load time went from >35 seconds down to 20 seconds.  The best part is I don't have all those crap filaments from companies I've never heard of and I don't have 2100 printer configurations I'll never use.

 

Well done! 

[epajet 0]

4 hours ago, ahoeben said:

The plugin has two main optimisations; not loading the profile files you don’t need, and not loading the non-generic materials. But it also helps with certain broken configurations. It is a bit of a swissarmyknife.

Brilliant plugin !

Works beautifully with 4.6.1 and has reduced startup time considerably.

An added benefit is that sub menus in Preferences now respond instantly whereas there was usually a long pause after clicking a tab.

Many thanks 🙂

[ahoeben 2,026]

4 hours ago, jbernardis said:

I didn't realize that I'd have to choose both optimizations

 

I figured some people might want to keep the branded materials, and on the other hand some people may not want to disable all other printer profiles but still want to remove all those materials.

 

22 minutes ago, epajet said:

An added benefit is that sub menus in Preferences now respond instantly whereas there was usually a long pause after clicking a tab.

 

You mean switching between eg Printers and Profiles? Huh, I did not realize the optimisations influenced that.

[epajet 0]

4 hours ago, ahoeben said:

You mean switching between eg Printers and Profiles? Huh, I did not realize the optimisations influenced that.

Yes , in Preferences switching between General, Settings, Printers  etc.  But even more so within those preference headings eg: switching between Information and Printer Settings in Materials.

This could be a coincidence but before I installed this plugin there was a very noticeable and frustrating lag when changing material or clicking the tabs mentioned above.

 

[jbernardis 1]

I just posted a question on the cura board.  After installing your plugin, I was inspired to doing some experimenting with Cura - I never really used it before because I really didn't like the clutter that your plug in took care of.  I don't know if this is something that happened before, but now when I create a new filament entry, it is only available to the currently active printer.  If I change to a different printer (I have 2) I am presented with a different list of filaments.  Has Cura always  separated the filaments by printer like this?  Or am I doing something wrong?  Or have I found another reason to not like Cura?

[ahoeben 2,026]

That has nothing to do with this plugin. Please don’t crosspost unrelated issues.

[jbernardis 1]

I'm sorry, but this is not totally unrelated.  You say you want testers, but then you disregard empirical data out of hand.  Your plug in affects the way filaments are presented to the user, and i observed a difference in the way filaments are presented.  It may not be a problem with the plugin, but it's valid to ask the question.

 

If it did not solve my problem, I'd be tempted to uninstall your plugin.  It may be moot anyway because I haven't yet decided if cura is something I want to use.

[ahoeben 2,026]

I answered you on the other thread you opened. I am not going to discuss this question in two threads.

 

Edit: for reference, see https://community.ultimaker.com/topic/32397-making-new-filaments-i-create-available-to-all-printers/

Edited May 6, 2020 by ahoeben

[ahoeben 2,026]

The plugin is now available from the Marketplace.

[OUPS65 3]

 

it should be installed automatically as it is so wonderful.

[Cuq 208]

Really efficient ? I've tested the plugin  without this plugin 17s to start CURA 4.6.1  with this plugin 15s so the benefits of 2s are very limited in my case. 

[DodgeDeBoulet 6]

In my case load time went from 20.23s to 16.09s. This is the time it took from double-click to launch to visibility of the build volume. I'll take a 20% improvement in load time any day. And that's 4 seconds less I'll have to wait for my 27 hour print! 😂

[ahoeben 2,026]

3 hours ago, Cuq said:

very limited in my case

Sure, in many cases the speedup can be minimal (though 2 out of 17 is still 11% faster). The speedup will be much more significant if you load Cura from a HDD instead of an SSD for example.
 

The plugin also has other functionality: it lets you remove unneeded branded materials, and it helps you fix specific configuration corruptions. But you don’t have to use it.

Edited May 9, 2020 by ahoeben

[OUPS65 3]

The idea of many materials may be interesting but CURA appeared to have been suffocated. In my case (am I the only one?), the full set is too heavy, too  bulky and totally unnecessary.

Now, in addition to the 30% gain at startup, it's such a pleasure to rediscover a flexible and efficient CURA 4.5.

Ouf ( in french in the text  🙂 ), I would be so sorry to discover CURA going down.

Edited May 10, 2020 by OUPS65