Adding custom material settings

[Tyronnosaurus 7]

Hello. I'm trying to add custom material settings (namely Young, Poisson and shear coefficients) to be used by another part of my plugin. I don't mind putting them in any location of the attached screenshot.

 

I've been checking the code in Cura, Uranium and fieldOfView's MaterialSettingsPlugin. From what I understand, Cura comes with a massive list of settings in which I can set their visibility, but I can't add or remove items. Is there something I'm missing? Thanks.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Tyronnosaurus

[nallath 1,124]

I think one of @ahoeben's plugins also adds an extra setting to the setting list. I'm not sure what trick he uses for that.

[Tyronnosaurus 7]

Nice memory, nallath. Looks like it's Cura-LinearAdvanceSettingPlugin. I'll check it out.

[ahoeben 2,012]

And Cura-ZOffsetPlugin too, though the Linear Advance one is a bit nicer because it uses a "familiar" json file instead of a dict.

 

Note that the method I use in both plugins is not officially sanctioned. There is some "illegal" access to "private" variables, and it is a bit of a magic incantation that seems to work. It might break at any Cura update, though the method of adding settings has been fairly stable so far. I did my best to document how it works.

[ahoeben 2,012]

For showing the settings in the Print Settings on the Materials pane of the preferences, I recommend using my Material Settings plugin. That requires even more "illegal" hacking to "copy" into your own plugin and it will be hard to make something that can be run side-by-side with that plugin.

Edited November 19, 2020 by ahoeben

[Tyronnosaurus 7]

Hey ahoeben, thanks for answering and for your work in those plugins. I've made the basic functionality work (adding new profile parameters like in Linear Advance Plugin) and it works perfectly.

 

Right now I was coincidentally looking into the Material Settings Plugin and wondering if it was worth it to do the same, considering future compatibility issues. I'd prefer having the settings associated to a material rather than a profile, but as a compromise I can simply use the Material Settings Plugin in parallel and, if it eventually breaks, my plugin will still work with the settings in the profile menu.