Lay Flat Center object and Rotate Object BUG question

[Johnmgg 1]

Hi all, OK, I just tried the following to see what I just hate about these features. I just laid flat a part that takes up most of the build surface. I want to use the LAY FLAT option to lay the part flat to the build platform in the exact orientation I have it currently. CURA keeps thinking that the part is to big for the build platform as you can see in the Screen shot which is my best guess. As you can see when I lay flat CURA wants to Reorient my part instead of just laying my part flat in the Z direction only. Also, when I use the .8mm nozzle size CURA 5 thinks the part is the correct size to fit into the build area but when I change to a .4mm nozzle size CURA informs me that my part will not fix. I think this is a bug. I then have to scale my part down to 98.5% to fit. but even then I have the above issues.

[Johnmgg 1]

Also, is there any way to precisely rotate an object? Just using the trackpad to rotate an object is not very precise. And I understand that I can orientate my part in my design software but that is just a work around, basically and a copout as to not fixing the issues in CURA. I have heard this recommendation. We need to be able to do this in CURA, Easily I guess we as Maker just deal with it or deal around the issues which we should not have to just deal with said issues. And I know with most open source software no one gets paid to fix the issues. But I would pay $50 to $100 for software that has all these little issues fixed. Case in point I Paid $75 for Repetier Server to run on my Pi. and I spend $245 per year to use my design software Shapr3D on my iPad. But NO, I can't speed $10,000+ to have someone fix the issues or design a better interface, etc. for this or any similar Open Source project. BUT, Shapr3D does update their software all the time. And I LOVE IT!

[Cuq 206]

It shouldn't be too hard to implement, once the part is flattened we use the ConvexHull geometry as for the nesting function, keeping the longest vector and aligning it with X or Y  by a rotation around Z should do the job.

[ahoeben 2,012]

1 hour ago, Cuq said:

It shouldn't be too hard to implement,

Feel free to improve the current implementation and make a pull-request. Contributing to Cura is not a very big step up from contributing plugins.

[Cuq 206]

I'm rather thinking of an integration into an existing plugin 😁 something regarding mesh manipulation. But need to test the concept before

[Cuq 206]

The principle is validated, it works. Sometimes of course depending the shape of the part "the longest" border is not necessary the right "main" orientation .  But it works as intended .

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Cuq

[Cuq 206]

 

[Cuq 206]

Finally decided to use it via a specific plugin :

 

 

 

Acces to the function via a Right Clic on the part (Thanks @fieldOfView ) for the sample code via his Mesh-tool Plugin.

 

And two new Orientation Function toward the X direction 

- Rotate in the main direction (X)
- Rotate the side direction (X)

 

And also allows in this case to have a faster access to the functions by using keyboard shortcuts as discussed here [#22](https://github.com/nallath/CuraOrientationPlugin/issues/22)

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Cuq