Request Add a Vertical Expansion setting along the Horizontal Expansion to deal with thing roof / floor

[Dadkitess 19]

Hey there,

 

I'm pretty sure I've already asked about it, and maybe other did, but no proper answer yet : can we get a Vertical Expansion setting, just like we have the Horizontal Expansion one ?

 

I use pretty often the Horizontal Expansion with generous positive number so that tiny parts became printable but also and mainly to make sure that tiny adjacent geometry actually merge each other without a functional gap. It would help a lot to get the same feature for vertical dimensions, for the very same reason + making sure that rood / floor are thick enough without needing to modify the original CAD which can be very very tedious to do.

 

Let me more explicit : imagine a whole car assembly. A real one, like, I have access to Porsche CAD assemblies which include everything, the very CAD they use to design an engineer the car. It's an example, I (really) don't have access to theses files haha, but I guess it'll help to figure out my issues.

 

In this assembly, everything has tolerances, mountable, for real, so that there is NOTHING merged to nothing. Like... The engine is mounted to its support, using screws and stuffs, and between each elements, there is 0.1mm for instance, or less. If I would print it, CURA would add some support between theses elements, while I obviously don't want it, because then when using PVA, the elements would separate each other after dissolving. Also, the engine cover (I don't know the exact translation but you get it, the hood that you can actually open to access the engine) is something like, say, 5mm thing. When scaling down to 1/32 scale, it would be too thing to be correctly printable, and let's assume that I can't / won't modify the original CAD to thicken this cover. Believe me, if you're not used to, it's not trivial haha.

 

So yeah, a Vertical Expansion setting would very much help in many situation and I'm quite surprises it did not make yet.

 

Can we have it ASAP in future releases ? Do you know some workaround that would help me with this 2 (main) issues ?

 

Thanks !

 

EDIT : By the way, I would say that using some "generous positive number" for horizontal expansion really tend to fail CURA slicing : like using +0.5mm for instance. I'm facing A LOT of issues when trying that. I would guess that since it applies to every external curves, when there is a lot of them, it's not easy to calculate, or it does not like handling the new path since close geometry would merge and define a new overall geometry. Think about 2 thin tubes being very close, like 0.5mm apart. I know they won't print well and I actually want them to merge to reinforce this part that would, for instance, be the only point of attachment of a wheel. So I will apply a 0.4mm Horizontal Expansion. They will enlarge and actually merge at their interface, somewhere in between, shaping a kind of "8" figure. Do we agree ? Can it be the reason why it tends to fail when this is not something as trivial as this example ?

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by Dadkitess

[Cuq 206]

Even if it's not exactly the same thing you can use the Vertical Scaling Factor Shrinkage Compensation to get a part a little bit taller or smaller :

It's not an expansion but a scaling factor.

[Dadkitess 19]

Thanks ! Yup but then it actually change the ratio. I can do that even manually, but not what i'm looking for, unfortunately 😕

 

[Dadkitess 19]

@MariMakes Sorry to bother you, I don't know if it's a good thing or not to ping you for theses kind of suggest.

 

Do you know if something like this is coming soon or if it's something that has not been suggested yet ?