Bed profile and texture

[jwlukow 0]

I have Sovol SV06 and Cura 5.5 on Windows.  I want to display an STL and PNG file to represent my printer bed. 

 

I have put SV06BuildPlate.STL into D:\UltiMaker Cura 5.5.0\share\cura\resources\meshes

I have put SV06_texture.png into C:\Users\johnl\AppData\Roaming\cura\5.5\images

 

My sovol_svo6.def.json file reads:

 

"metadata":
    {
        "visible": true,
    "platform": "SV06BuildPlate.stl",
    "platform_texture": "SV06_texture.png",
        "quality_definition": "sovol_base_planetary"
    },

 

The platform is showing up, but the texture is not. 

 

I have tried saving the PNG into D:\UltiMaker Cura 5.5.0\share\cura\resources\images as well.

 

Do I have the syntax wrong?  I noticed in some other .json files, that the picture they reference comes up at the back and not on the bed.  

SV06BuildPlate.stl

Edited November 29, 2023 by jwlukow
Edited to show that I have the build plate, but not the texture.

[Slashee_the_Cow 415]

I specifically got rid of the platform in mine, the last thing I need is logos plastered in Cura 🙂. Anyway the platform files for other printers are just flat plates with holes in them for markings.

 

You need to subtract your platform texture (n.b. an SVG would be better than a PNG, but hey, if that's what you've got) from the STL file.

[jwlukow 0]

55 minutes ago, Slashee_the_Cow said:

You need to subtract your platform texture (n.b. an SVG would be better than a PNG, but hey, if that's what you've got) from the STL file.

I have an SVG version.  Please explain how to subtract, and in what program?  I have Blender, FreeCAD, AutoCAD

[jwlukow 0]

So, even better.  I just upgraded to 5.6 and now I don't even have the bed......

[Slashee_the_Cow 415]

As for your build plate disappearing in 5.6? It sounds like you only saved it in the Cura install directory. If you did, it won't have copied over. Only files in the configuration folder get copied over to newer versions.

 

Now it's time for Slashee's Amazing Thing Which Isn't Hard But Takes Too Many Steps:

 

Note: this might look hard. It's easy, just fiddly. Don't start this if you have to leave for work in 10 minutes.

 

Okay, so I'm in FreeCAD, in the part workbench. I've just made a simple "platform" out of a couple of boxes then joined them with a boolean union. If you import an STL file it will probably only import as a mesh:

About the only (or at least easiest) way (I know of) to convert this to a regular part we can work with. Go to Tools > Addon Manager

In the Filter box search for MeshToPart, and it should return one result:

Click that to open its page, then click the Install button.

It's been a little bit since I've set up FreeCAD, but hopefully it will have created a toolbar for macros you've downloaded. If not go to View > Toolbars and see if there's an Auto-Created Macro Toolbar. Probably won't appear in the same place on your view as it does on mine. Anyway, hopefully that's there, and you can select your mesh and click the button for it (which for some reason didn't download for me but if it did, it's the picture you saw on the install page):

Worst case scenario: select the mesh in the object tree on the left, then in the menus go to Macro > Macros ..., that'll bring up this window:

Find MeshToPart.FCMacro in the list and click execute, then the mesh icon (green map sorta thing) should be gone from your item and it's got a cube!

 

But this is how I started in FreeCAD, partially because I'm lazy and partially because I forgot you'd need to import the STL when I was doing these instructions.

 

And here I am in Inkscape. FreeCAD loves SVGs from Inkscape. If you made yours in Inkscape skip ahead.

Inkscape instructions start here

If you didn't make it in Inkscape, open it in Inkscape, open it, go File > Clean Up Document, then File > Document Properties, change the unit type to mm, set the width/height of your file, and click Resize to Content. If that doesn't resize your content, then just change the size of the document (in mm) to what you want it to be and then just select all your content and scale it to fill the bounding box.

(And no, I don't know why the tool icons are half off screen. I think it's a high DPI scaling thing).

Then go to File > Save As... and make sure you set the file type to Inkscape SVG

Inkscape instructions end here

 

Back to FreeCAD! Go File > Import... and load your SVG. It'll ask whether you want to load it as an image or geometry. You want geometry.

This... isn't ideal. It's imported my Os filled. But we can fix that. If you don't have a problem with shapes that should be hollow, skip ahead.

The insides are their own paths. So for each one we just need to select both (and make sure the outside is above the the inside in the object list) and we want to do a Cut (for which the technical term is subtraction):

It might give you a scary warning:

We know better than it. Just click yes. Do it for the other one, and we have this (they're appearing as cuts in the object list):

Instructions for hollow objects end here.

 

We need it to be 3D in order to be able to cut it out of the plate. And the Part workbench can't extrude paths. So go to the Draft workbench, select all the paths of your object, and click Upgrade:

In my case it went straight to being a compound object. This is good! Depending on yours, you may have to upgrade it more than once (a compound or union should work). So with my shiny new compound I click on Draft to Sketch:

So now I have a sketch. You don't need to worry about looking at it, but I want to give any FreeCAD users here a heart attack:

(It's because mine is all curves so it converted them to 70 different b-splines).

 

Err... anyway. Now in your object tree you'll have the compound and the sketch:

Hide the compound from view by selecting it and pressing space. Its icon will grey out like paths did.

Okay, so now we have a sketch! Go back to the Part workbench, select your sketch in the tree on the left, and click Extrude.

This should make the object tree switch to this:

Don't worry about most of it. Just make sure Length > Along is at least as thick as your build plate and that Create Solid is checked, and click OK. Might not look very impressive if you've had the camera at the top like I have, but you'll notice the sketch is filled in and has been put into an Extrude item in the object tree:

Lot more impressive if you rotate the camera from the top:

 

 

So now select the Extrude and we're going to the properties panel down below:

You might have to expand it but you want to get to Base > Placement > Position. Fiddle with the X and Y coordinates to get it to the position you want and it'll be inside the build plate:

So now we just select the build plate, which in my case is just a fusion object, it'll be different for an imported STL, and our extrusion in the object tree and cut!

And voila! Plate sans moo. You'll see it's become a Cut object in the object tree:

So now just select the Cut object in the tree, then go to File > Export and make sure it's exporting as an STL, then save your STL!

 

Hopefully that's close enough to human-speak (to cows it's a second language) to follow the instructions. Let me know if you need any clarification or anything.