Share customizations between installations

[assaero 1]

Hey all,

I work with multiple computers distributed with one S5 connected via digitalfactory. Computer installations are Win10&Win11. My goal is to send a printjob to the printer while I am still in another country from my laptop in the hotel, come home the next day, take out the print and do another job from my local computer for small parts, etc. I had to do however some JSON modifications and custom material profiles on my main system. So I thought, "as all data (including materials) seems to be saved as .json/.material/.inst.cfg etc, why not just copying the complete cura folder to my external drive, do a new installation on my laptop and after starting it once copy all in again?". Sadly, this approach seem to have failed. Neither my customized quality profiles pop up nor my material profiles. So where else is that all saved, if not under the cura folder? How is the configuration done? Is Cura making use of the Appdata/Documents folder for any configuration or god forbid, the windows registry? What else should I have extracted from the original system to clone the complete setup?

[IRobertI 520]

Click on Help->Show Configuration Folder and it'll open up the folder that holds the settings for your install.

[Slashee_the_Cow 319]

On Windows the configuration folder location is %APPDATA%\cura\<version number>. You can just copy+paste between computers, bear in mind that it won't automatically synchronise any changes. The only thing which you can make automatically synchronise is plugins installed (by signing in to an UltiMaker account in Cura before you download them, and then signing into it on your other devices).

 

If you're a little adventurous, you can make the whole thing by using cloud storage and either a script to automatically synchronise the folders or just a straight symbolic link to where the cloud data is stored on your computer, but in my experience neither of those works particularly well (mostly because however long it takes to sync changes from another computer is always slightly more time than it takes for what's already on my computer to overwrite it).

[assaero 1]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:01 AM, Slashee_the_Cow said:

On Windows the configuration folder location is %APPDATA%\cura\<version number>. You can just copy+paste between computers, bear in mind that it won't automatically synchronise any changes. The only thing which you can make automatically synchronise is plugins installed (by signing in to an UltiMaker account in Cura before you download them, and then signing into it on your other devices).

 

If you're a little adventurous, you can make the whole thing by using cloud storage and either a script to automatically synchronise the folders or just a straight symbolic link to where the cloud data is stored on your computer, but in my experience neither of those works particularly well (mostly because however long it takes to sync changes from another computer is always slightly more time than it takes for what's already on my computer to overwrite it).

Thank you - I normally run it with an external drive anyway, as my design stuff is cloudsynced onto this drive (so that I have the cloud backup without depending on an internet connection) - I just put both main application folder and the config folder @IRobertI mentioned onto it and did a fs junction on all systems on it - this seems to help. (Yes, I like filesystems, why does everybody ask this ;D)

[Slashee_the_Cow 319]

5 hours ago, assaero said:

(Yes, I like filesystems, why does everybody ask this ;D)

I didn't ask, personally I love BTRFS. I tried linking the Cura config directory on my Linux install to my Windows one (automounts at boot) but found it annoying that since the recently accessed files and last saved/loaded path are in completely different locations on the different OSes they got wiped each time I switch.

 

So I just set up rsync to sync the whole config folder except cura.cfg at boot 😄