Working with 40+ small objects in Cura

[Marecar 0]

Hello all;

 

Cura slows down drastically when I place 40+ small objects on the build-plate.

 

I am trying to put my printer to good use by printing some ear savers for our healthcare workers.

Object is simple in design and optimized for 3D printing so one peace takes 15 min to print. STL file is 120kb in size. I could place large quantities to print at once for overnight printing and weekend prints. As I place progressively more objects on the build-plate and arrange them, Cura slows down dramatically. It takes very long to multiply an object and place it. It even slows down the menu window. with 40 pcs on the plate total file size shouldnt be more than 5 megabytes yet cura takes upwards of 5 minutes to update a menu or place another object. Computing power is not an issue, tried it on 3 different machines with same/very similar results. I have worked and printed models that are 100mb in size, why is quantity of objects an issue?

 

Here is the process in a bit more detail in case Im doing something wrong.

Because of the shape of the object I can place 15 of them on the place of my S5. but because the are thin (1mm high) I can stack them on top of one another. So I created a "slice", second object, one layer thick, with same shape. I place the slice on top of the first part and print it with breakeaway material. that way I can create a stack 10 pcs tall (and more) that come apart easy once complete. I then group this "stack" and multiply it to fill the plate surface. With 5 stacks on the plate cura takes 5 minutes to multiply a single stack and place it, and it progressively gets worse.

 

Thank you!

[ahoeben 2,047]

A workaround is to duplicate and arrange the model in a 3d package, and load that into Cura as a single model.

[Marecar 0]

Thank you very much ahoeben! Seems like a simple solution, but it never occurred to me to try.