Question: how to prevent settings changing when switching to a different printer?

[rmpel 0]

I often balance my print jobs over two printers and when switching from one to the other in Cura, all my settings change. How can I prevent that? It is quote annoying to have to recheck every setting, like infill%, number of walls, wall alternating etc just because I switched to a different printer. It's not like those settings are printer dependent, but Cura treats them as such.

 

[ahoeben 1,769]

In two words: you can't.

 

Cura considers added printers as entirely independent from eachother. This includes all settings. For some (most?) people, this is very useful, because different printers will have very different configurations, where certain settings will work better than other settings. Cura does not "know" which settings are safe to copy between printers and which are not.

[rmpel 0]

Thank you for your reply and although it makes sense for some of the settings, it most certainly does not make sense for many others. But I'll accept it, and will have to be careful when switching printers.

 

"Cura does not "know" which settings are safe to copy between printers and which are not."

 

Maybe it is time that Cura be taught this 😉 . 

[ahoeben 1,769]

1 hour ago, rmpel said:

Maybe it is time that Cura be taught this

 

It is not as obvious as you might think.

 

A setting such as infill pattern might not sound like it is one of those things that are not printer dependent. After all, it is just how it looks or works with the model, right? But some printers might eg not like gyroid because it makes the head move at a resonant frequency. Even for infill density it could be necessary to change that between differently configured printers eg because of material flow creating overextrusion or underextrusion at certain densities.

 

It is also a question of making it obvious and predicatble to the user what settings would be carried over, and which are not. Not carrying over ANY settings at least makes that predictable.

Edited June 24, 2020 by ahoeben

[rmpel 0]

I see what you mean. But perhaps take a lesson from Slic3r? 

Material settings: everything material related, to tackle things like over- or under extrusion , as you said.

Printer settings: every setting that is printer related; resonance would be tackled by setting the infill speed, and, of course, the printer would know its own jerk and acceleration settings.

And finally; print settings; everything that is not printer or material dependant. Like number of wall lines, infill percentage, things like that.

 

Again, I get what you are saying, I understand it's not as black and white, but I'm just stating an inconvenience 🙂 and perhaps with this insight, we can make Cura better.

 

So once again; thank you. I appreciate the time you took to respond.

 

"Not carrying over ANY settings at least makes that predictable."

True, it IS very predictable, because there is just "one" settings library. It's all on one pile. If it were split into a few sections, one section carried over, one or more others not, it would still be predictable. I've lost quite some time discovering my second printer was printing in .1 layer height, 70% infill, while I intended to have 2 identical prints running at .2 with 25% infill.

 

Anyway. I'm going in circles 🙂

Sorry.

[Elfonerio 5]

4 hours ago, rmpel said:

I see what you mean. But perhaps take a lesson from Slic3r? 

Material settings: everything material related, to tackle things like over- or under extrusion , as you said.

Printer settings: every setting that is printer related; resonance would be tackled by setting the infill speed, and, of course, the printer would know its own jerk and acceleration settings.

And finally; print settings; everything that is not printer or material dependant. Like number of wall lines, infill percentage, things like that.

 

Again, I get what you are saying, I understand it's not as black and white, but I'm just stating an inconvenience 🙂 and perhaps with this insight, we can make Cura better.

 

So once again; thank you. I appreciate the time you took to respond.

 

"Not carrying over ANY settings at least makes that predictable."

True, it IS very predictable, because there is just "one" settings library. It's all on one pile. If it were split into a few sections, one section carried over, one or more others not, it would still be predictable. I've lost quite some time discovering my second printer was printing in .1 layer height, 70% infill, while I intended to have 2 identical prints running at .2 with 25% infill.

 

Anyway. I'm going in circles 🙂

Sorry.

Can you just save the print profile and use that with the loaded part? 

[rmpel 0]

Hmmm ... now why didn't I think of that ...