Make it easier to have more instances open (%appdata% needs reset)

[DDDPrintno 0]

Multiple instances (having >1 cura.exe open) is a problem with Cura. Multiple instances is necessary if I e.g need to adjust a gcode and re-print. Having multiple printers and working on multiple projects, I often need multiple instances. 

 

This commonly leads to what I guess is de-sync within the settings of Cura. It messes up the files, and the easiest way I've found to get things working again is to delete all %appdata% and manually adjust and insert settings everytime this happens, which can occur many times a month.

 

My suggestion? Implement tabs like photoshop or every web browser and figure a way to sync while having multiple projects open. This makes it possible for users to work on multiple projects without having 5 cura.exe open. 

[gr5 2,172]

That would be wonderful.

 

Instead I'm going to give you the workaround I use.  I have 5 active printers (used almost every week - often all 5 running at once).  3 different types of printers.  What I do is I always save the *project*.  I don't save profiles.  When you save the project it saves the STL file(s) and the rotations and positions and scalings.  It saves all the settings and overrides.  It saves even machine settings. 

 

It's quite quick to save your current project (even if you aren't quite done modifying all your settings for the current project), quickly open another project, make some change, reslice, save that project again, then go back to the project you were just working on.  I do this all the time because like I said - I have 3 printer types.

 

For example I'm working on slicing something for my S5 but suddenly realize one of my um2go's has a part coming loose from the bed (rare, but it happens).  I decide to enable brim so I save the S5 project, load the um2go project, enable brim, save the gcode, save the project, copy the gcode to the um2go's sd card, restart that print, then back to my computer I load the S5 project that I had been working on.

 

If you have a bed of parts - say 25 parts all rotated and positioned just the way you want - if you save that project and load it at a later time it will remember all the positions and rotations of all the parts.

[nallath 1,120]

14 hours ago, DDDPrintno said:

This commonly leads to what I guess is de-sync within the settings of Cura. It messes up the files, and the easiest way I've found to get things working again is to delete all %appdata% and manually adjust and insert settings everytime this happens, which can occur many times a month.

Cura simply checks what files are different from how you originally loaded them. So the last instance of Cura that you shut down is the version that is saved to disk.

 

14 hours ago, DDDPrintno said:

My suggestion? Implement tabs like photoshop or every web browser and figure a way to sync while having multiple projects open. This makes it possible for users to work on multiple projects without having 5 cura.exe open. 

Good suggestion, but unfortunately, it's easier said that done. Implementing this would take months of work from the entire team.