Bug UltiMaker Cure 5.6 Visually Braking my PC when Slicing and Previewing the Slice.

[theasherbot 0]

I want to print a christmas tree, so I  made myself one in blender and imported it into Ultimaker Cure.

I sliced the model so I know how long it would take to print and it said 13 days! I have a RTX 3050, 6gb of ram (EDIT: 16gb), and a intel core i7 (EDIT: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz   2.30 GHz), and it took more then 5 minuets to slice (I do not know if that is slow).

At the start of the slice it was using 70% of my CPU, and only about 1-2gb of ram. About halfway through the progress bar stopped and my CPU went down to about 30%, but started using 3gb of ram! then it started moving very slowly and it started to use 3.5-4gb of ram and 70% of my CPU. At the last 4th of the slice my CPU started maxing out and it was still using 3.5-4 gb.

 

when it did finish everything got super laggy. When I was looking at the preview my PC started braking. I restarted my PC and it went back to normal.

 

So I messed around with some settings to get it down to 9 days, and same thing happened when it was slice. I eventually realized that I could print the tree upside down to lower the print to 5 days and again same thing happened.

 

Sadly the visual glitch is not happening when I record. I will update this when I get the footage. But here is a video recording of the slice. EDIT: The wired glitch did happen later. here are the videos.

 

 

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by theasherbot
Fixed Specs, Added video of the glitch.

[Dustin 132]

Question would be how large is the file size of this model.
That will factor A LOT into how long it takes for your computer to slice it.
Memory usage would be a factor of due to how large the model is.
Preview takes a lot of resources if the model is very large in both file size as well as just overall physical size.

While it sucks, what you described would not exactly be unexpected. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 279]

Also when it comes to performance - there's a lot more to performance than saying "I have a Core i7". A new i7 14700K would absolutely curbstomp my i7 7700K (which itself can handily beat, but not as severely, my old i7 2600K).

 

Also, 6GB of RAM is not a lot these days - I mostly have 32GB because I can, but I'd still say 8GB as a minimum and 16GB as a good amount to aim for.

 

Actual advice:

• With RAM that criminally low, close everything else while you're working in Cura, especially web browsers. It's probably swapping (using the computer's storage as virtual RAM) like mad and that slows things down a lot.
• An RTX 3050 is literally the lowest GPU in its series and probably doesn't have a lot of VRAM, so display large complex models will push it a bit.
• Unless your printer is unbelievably damn good at overhangs, you're going to need support. Lots of support. That takes time.
• Printing something like that upside down is a really, really, really bad idea. It has so little contact area at the base it will fall over mid-print, most likely under its own weight, even if you set the speed, acceleration and jerk to really, really low (which you'd have to for them not to knock it over, which would then increase the print time anyway).

It's better to take longer but do it right than to try and cheat the system and lose 2-3 days when your cheat backfires. This is a lesson I have learned through experience, just not on that high a scale (worst time, lost about 12 hours of progress).

[theasherbot 0]

Thank you guys soo much! I got a video of the real reason why I posted this. The video is at the bottom.

 

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there's a lot more to performance than saying "I have a Core i7". A new i7 14700K would absolutely curbstomp my i7 7700K

Sorry about me not knowing my specs at all. Here is what "Settings > System > About" has.

 

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Question would be how large is the file size of this model.

The Model is 4 mb big. 34,457 Vertices. 105,022 edges. 70,415 faces.

 

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• Printing something like that upside down is a really, really, really bad idea.

I am going to print the tree in smaller parts, because I had a half size print of the tree going upside down. Cura said it should take 24 hours and it did break 9 hours through the print.

I was slicing a test part for a mechanism to lock the parts together and Cura crashed and the wired visual glitch happened so I recorded it. Sadly I was not recording before Cura crashed. I think this will only happen if you have 2+ monitors. here is the video. 

 

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by theasherbot
Added more info about the model

[Slashee_the_Cow 279]

Cura does have some known problems with multiple monitors, especially in certain situations like this one. Try running it with only one monitor active.

 

As for slicing and printing times - other than bugs when slicing stalls indefinitely or fails entirely - it is what it is.

When slicing, it's not just about how many faces there are, Cura also has to calculate support, infill, the most efficient way (both in terms of filament and time) to do things, how best to hide Z seams, etc.

 

And printers... well I mean you can get "high speed" materials, not sure what the difference is chemically, never tried them, probably never will, because that generally means increased acceleration and jerk (which usually lead to bad, especially on taller models). Like most things in life, you can do it the quick way or the right way, and while I get away with the quick way in a lot of things, this isn't one of them.

[theasherbot 0]

OK Thank you soo much! I will try using 1 monitor for slicing.

[gr5 2,178]

70,000 triangles is a lot.  I've sliced that many before on very rare occasions.  I would try reducing the number of triangles aka "decimation".  This will make your life better such that you can try out more slicing experiments.  Most of my models slice in about 4 seconds.

 

I use this technique.  This is the only thing I use meshlab for and it's wonderful:

http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/polygon_reduction_with_meshlab

 

Or when you export to STL there should be options in your CAD to reduce the triangles.  Like a "resolution" option or something.  If you use openscad, or DSM I can help you with how to do that.

[gr5 2,178]

Decimation won't help with your print time directly but it will help indirectly because you will have more time to experiment with settings like what angle you position the model, what type of support you use, and so on.

[theasherbot 0]

Thank you soo much! I will try to decimate my model and see how that turns out. I use blender and sadly it does not have I was to reduce the triangles when exporting, but there are other was that I can try.

[theasherbot 0]

I got the number of triangles down to 5.492 before losing to much quality. It now takes about 1 min to slice. While making the model I did not think that more triangles would be harder to slice so I put a lot of sub divisions to make the corners of the tree more rounded. I could probably get the triangles down to 3k if I remodel while trying to only add more faces on the parts that will stand out.

I just saw that as I printed out the last piece of the tree.

[Slashee_the_Cow 279]

For 3D printing, there's really no point making your stuff much more detailed than the Minimum Line Width you're going to print width.

[gr5 2,178]

Yeah but blender is... complicated.  It has these features... like "subdivision", that work great for making visual models.  I mean really amazing features.   5000 faces is probably fine.  To slice faster you can do thicker layer height - I mean just for experimenting with different settings.

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 279]

1 hour ago, gr5 said:

Yeah but blender is... complicated.  It has these features... like "subdivision", that work great for making visual models.  I mean really amazing features.

Don't worry, you don't have to tell me how great Blender is at what it does and how good the results look on my 4K monitor. It's just that making 3D prints isn't really what it's designed for.

[gr5 2,178]

So true!  I used to try to push people away from sketchup and blender.  But it took me a year to get fast at sketchup (and months to get fast at DSM) and I realize that the investment into switching CAD is probably not worth it for some people.  At some point I memorized the shortcuts to the point where I don't even know what my fingers are doing anymore and instead I just create.

 

And sketchup and blender have lots of addons/features to assist you with making proper, manifold, useful prints if you just google about it.

[theasherbot 0]

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It's just that making 3D prints isn't really what it's designed for.

Ya I am just using blender because I already use it, and as gr5 said press the shortcuts without even thinking. I also do not want to learn how to use a different CAD. Modeling for 3D prints will be different because I do not need it to be super big number of polygons. instead I just need to focus on having the detail where it is needed, and no where else. It will just take me some time to get better at it.

[Slashee_the_Cow 279]

7 hours ago, theasherbot said:

Ya I am just using blender because I already use it, and as gr5 said press the shortcuts without even thinking. I also do not want to learn how to use a different CAD. Modeling for 3D prints will be different because I do not need it to be super big number of polygons. instead I just need to focus on having the detail where it is needed, and no where else. It will just take me some time to get better at it.

Just because it's not what it's designed for doesn't mean you can't do it 🙂. Better to stick with what you know than suck at something you don't.