Opening 3mf and not overwriting/adding profile/material

[jaysenodell 18]

The "general" advice is to save every slice as a project so you can get back your settings. While this is "good" I'm struggling with "profile/materal #∞" issues and need some help managing this. Here is my workflow.

1.  Start with a base profile/material that is based on base STL testing using STL and materials to get things right.
2. Move into full sized prototype with STL #1 and save project as STL_1_noz_profile_material.3mf (I'm using the autoname plugin).
3. Move to STL #2 and discover that changes are needed to profile. Update/Save profile (still profile #0) and save 3mf. 
4. Now to reslice stl #2 I reopen STL_1_noz_profile_material.3mf and I'm forced to either update saving it to my configs and losing my now modified profile0 or create a new profile2. same with material (which gets changed as printing time reveals need to change).
5. If I need to change material for a project (pla to petg/abs) same thing with blowing up my perfectly fine previously existing pla or profile settings or adding new ones. 

 

Maybe I'm missing something but if I manually change a setting in a profile and DO NOT SAVE IT, cura seems to dispose of that change next time I start a project. Is there a setting somewhere that adds a "leave my configs alone, just tweak the settings for this session when you load a 3mf" that I'm not seeing? Basicaly I would like to treat loading a 3mf just like starting a new project. Unless I explicitly save the new/modified profile, it should not be added to the cura configs. I have to assume I'm missing something hence not going to git with this.

 

Hope this makes sense. I'm short on coffee and there's none on the horizon. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 410]

If there's an option for that, I haven't seen it either. So either we're both missing something or Cura is. Probably should submit a feature request and the best result is "we already have that, it's over here" 🙂

(If they do say that, make sure to reply here with where the obvious thing we're both missing is)

[PartySausage 21]

I may be (& probably am) missing something here but can't you just import the STL #1 model from the project file instead of the entire project, which will keep the settings that were changed for STL #2 then if you need to save the project for STL #1 afterwards you can just overwrite the previous 3mf

Edited August 12 by PartySausage

[Slashee_the_Cow 410]

2 minutes ago, PartySausage said:

I may (& probably am) missing something here but can't you just import the STL #1 model from project file instead of the entire project, which will keep the settings that were changed for STL #2 then if you need to save the project for STL #1 afterwards you can just overwrite the previous 3mf

I don't think you're missing anything 🙂 but that's not an exact solution if you want the settings from project #1 so you can change one thing and slice it again or something without it overriding the changes you've been working in your new project... 😕

[PartySausage 21]

Ah that bit I didn't get.

I don't know how to do that if at all possible.

Maybe a sort of workaround could be to save a project with the current settings before opening the STL #1 project & doing what you need to do with that configuration. Then when finished open the project that was created at the start, which would revert the settings changed by the STL #1 project & the subsequent settings changes.

It's a bit clunky but would that work?

[Slashee_the_Cow 410]

1 minute ago, PartySausage said:

It's a bit clunky but would that work?

Yeah... but it's clunky. So I hope @jaysenodell has put in a feature request by now.

[jaysenodell 18]

Have not added the feature request because I like to sleep. 

 

As someone who also thinks about how I can reject feature requests when not submitted, you are helping me undertand my actual use case as well. Specifically, "how should this work to be useful"

 

To @Slashee_the_Cow's point, the issue is that we have three + profiles. A (org in a project), B (in a project), C (in cura).

• In 5.7.1
  • Use the folder icon to open project A or B.
  • When loading A or B you get a screen indicating the number of variances, but no inidcation of what the variences are.
  • You then get a new profile (p #A).
  • In profile manager it doesn't show a change from p C to P A, just a new profile.
  • In ~/Library/Applicaiton Support/cura/5.7/quality_changes there aer new files for the printer settings ad extruder showing that these are added to disk without me actualy hitting "save" (my originals are here as well).
  • Note there is no option to update and there is no ability to compare to other pofiles (is there any prfile compare tool in Cura?)
• In 5.6.0
  • Use the folder icon to open project A or B
  • You are asked to open as project or import models (I never noticed this was missing in 5.7)
  • I get shown a count of changes from CURRENTLY SELECTED PROFILE/MATERIAL not listing of the action changes.
  • I can update existing pofile material or create new
  • In the update case the files in ~/Library/Application Support/cura/5.6/quality_changes show IMMEDIATE UPDATE with no ability to roll back or see what was changed.
  • In the create new, I get the new "profile #" with no ability to compare profiles.

In a different test, I

• Change a setting (turn on sprialize mode) and close cura WITHOUT SAVING THE PROFILE
• Quit cura.
• Inspect ~/Library/Application Support/<vrs>/quality_changes and see there is NOT UPDATES to any files.
• Open Cura
• Validate status of changed setting... spiralize is stil on.

To me this indicates that Cura CAN save profile states over muliple sessions without needing to fork up my saved setting or create a new profile. I believe this to be the prefered behavior for saved projets (load profile embedded in project as "overlay" vs forcing it into cura install). 

 

I also think there is room for a "compare" feature as the stub files in the cura folders only include changes from stock profiles so a simple fs diff won't really tell you the whole picture. 

 

Yes I know this needs to go to github. I'm just looking to see if anyone can say "yep... seeing the same thing".