38 minutes ago, GregValiant said:Additionally I believe most are Ultimaker employees which will no doubt have some political implications regarding how they spend their time and what they give away for free.
The biggest implication being that Ultimaker pays them to develop software for Ultimaker printers. The fact that it can also be used for other printers is a bonus. But any feature that does not directly benefit Ultimaker printers either has to come from community members like @burtoogle or me, or from printer manufacturers. The Ultimaker employees still take time to check and include these contributions, but at times they also have to reject features because it would take the project too far from what Ultimaker needs or it would take too much time in the future to maintain the feature in the codebase.
My contributions have been mainly in the frontend, not in CuraEngine. Some of the changes you need could be implemented by postprocessing the gcode that CuraEngine creates, which can be done with a plugin in Cura. CuraEngine does not have a plugin-system, only the frontend does. For example, I have written Blackbelt Cura (which is still for FFF printers, but slices at an angle) completely as a set of plugins.
2 hours ago, piter123 said:it looks like the engine was set up with the idea of being extended to other methods: is that so? and, if so, what was the concept?
No, not really. As far as I know.
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GregValiant 1,318
In the year or so that I've been hanging around here I've developed some feel for the people involved in the work on Cura. I'm sure that some would be able to give you guidance into what the thoughts were behind the software design. Whether or not they have the time (or inclination) is another thing. The Cura Team is heavily involved in the new Arachne version along with maintenance and support of the current and past versions. Additionally I believe most are Ultimaker employees which will no doubt have some political implications regarding how they spend their time and what they give away for free.
Firmware design, mainboard design, and the physical design of your machine, are other things you have no doubt considered. It would appear to be a fusion between FFF/FDM gcode generation and translation and CNC gcode generation and translation. I would call it an ambitious endeavor.
I know some of these are directly involved in the Cura Team at Ultimaker. In no particular order - @ghostkeeper, @nallath, @fvrmr, @rburema, @SandervG and @ahoeben at FieldOfView. In addition @burtoogle (@smartavionics on GitHub) has his own thing going with Cura itself. I hope none take offense that I've included their handles here (and that none I've left out take offense).
As for me...I know just enough about this stuff to hurt myself.
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