Cura autoslicing - poll

[pm_dude 27]

@bot I'm sure you could have. Please try to figure out the part of putting that in your own version of Cura without asking for help here. You can find plenty of info everywhere and make a backup first. Stop prettending to be so much on the user side that you can't even try new stuff. Afterall, you have a 3D printer and its still far from just plug and play.

@nallath I wont make a pull request to integrate it in main. It's changing one file right now, doesn't save in the profile settings (it's better that way) and reuse the layer view image so I dont consider it complete.

I'll let you guys decide if you want it or not as it's not part of the roadmap and will add more maintenance like you said. You guys already have enough pull requests to review and I prefer you to work on PU .

[pm_dude 27]

Please note I have added a path above for the file with only the changes for the manual slicing. The file in github contain other changes not related to slicing that will not work if you have only that file.

 

[bot 0]

Thanks. And to be honest, I'm busy printing, I simply do not even have the time to interrupt these activities to modify the program.

I really appreciate the effort though. And I appreciate the encouragement and sentiments. I COULD figure it out, you're right, but taking on the actual printing right now is presenting enough of a "challenge." I wasn't expecting clients to be coming in so quickly...

 

[mastory 44]

Moved to new topic as my post amounted to a debugging/ troubleshooting request.

Matt

 

[Daid 306]

Thanks. And to be honest, I'm busy printing full time I simply do not even have the time to interrupt these activities to modify the program. If I bork it, I will lose a lot of time and therefore money.

 

You can copy the directory "C:\program files (x86)\Cura_14.12" to somewhere else, and run it from there to have 2 installations, one you can mess with and another one that runs fine.

Cura will run side by side, with different versions, and will run if you just copy it (no real install required). As those are two important things for me when I started to build Cura.

 

[bot 0]

Oh nice I didn't know you could just copy and paste a new install. If I wasn't in the middle of the biggest and most nerve-racking print job yet, I'd mess around with it. Thanks for the advice though.

And also on that note, I'm kind of an idiot... I didn't realize there was a current release newer than 14.09.

Oooops. I bet it'll fix most of the slowdown hassles... was 14.09 the release with the "SD bug" you talk about?

 

[Daid 306]

No, the SD bug fix was much older. Somewhere in the 13.xx range. 13.06 was the first full release with the new engine, and thus the auto-slicing. But also a lot of other changes where made in that release, so there where quite a few bug fix releases after that.

There is a 14.12 out now. But I don't think it will fix your issue. As your major issue is with the GCode preview. Which is a difficult and complex monster.

There will be a new experimental soon, which might help on some of the issues that people are having with auto-slicing. But I did not trust those changes enough to put them in a full release yet. (Major changes just before release usually result in horrible bugs).

 

[bot 0]

Well, the issue isn't the g-code viewer itself. I can handle it taking a while to load. I just hate accidentally having it load again. But there does seem to be an intermittent issue where it takes a LONG time to do some things before even getting to the g code preivew... I'll try to pin point some more specific details to recreate the scenario, but things are going smoothly for now (I think it relates to the number of triangles in a model).

 

[pm_dude 27]

Manual slicing in version 14.12

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byhp9wWpyMGWNXd2RkVTT2U0aG8/view?usp=sharing

 

[drayson 75]

Manual slicing in version 14.12

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byhp9wWpyMGWNXd2RkVTT2U0aG8/view?usp=sharing

 

Tried it and works great - nice workaround for really "difficult" prints and a slooooowwwww PC :smile:

Thanks!

PS: I´m sure, in daily work I´ll really seldom to never use it...

 

[Daid 306]

I did some experimental changes:

http://software.ultimaker.com/Cura_closed_beta/

And I would really like to know if this helps people who are having problems, and are requesting manual slicing because of that.

 

[bot 0]

I will download it and try it out! Thank you. What changes did you make? (dumb it down for me, please! )

 

[bot 0]

 

 

[pm_dude 27]

Ha you seems to have the same issue as one I have noticed on some computers (cant tell what makes it do it on some pc and not others)

When making changes or move parts when very close to the 0.5sec threashold before starting to slice it might freeze while its slicing in background. Cura eventually recover from the freeze and start slicing again.

[bigmouse 6]

New to this type of software, must admit, Cura is very easy to use, The slicing is good but heavily processor dependant. I run it on i7 sandybridge laptop with 8m of ram and have to wait a while on large files, guess the people that doesn't like the feature are running it on slower pc's

 

[Daid 306]

New to this type of software, must admit, Cura is very easy to use, The slicing is good but heavily processor dependant. I run it on i7 sandybridge laptop with 8m of ram and have to wait a while on large files, guess the people that doesn't like the feature are running it on slower pc's

 

Few years ago people had to wait hours for (what people now see as) a medium sized object. You're welcome ;-)

But, yes, it's heavy on the CPU, however, it does so on the lowest system priority, so everything else should get priority over the background slicing. So even on slower PCs the slicing itself should not impact performance too much. So it's stuff around the background slicing that is causing more issues then that background slicing itself.

 

[bot 0]

Did you see my video?

 

[anon4321 16]

I think a lot of this and probably part of Daids frustration is that what people refer to as "slicing" or "auto-slicing" is really one part of a multi-step process. The steps that bracket the slicing option might be stalling and locking up the UI.

I watched bot's video and something is really gummed up...

 

[Daid 306]

Did you see my video?

 

Not yet, the UM2 firmware issue is a bit more pressing.

 

[gr5 2,203]

I did the exact same thing that bot did in his video - got the red text box - but no delays. I typed a new value and it started slicing again.

@bot - Are you sure you don't have any antivirus software? Maybe windows firewall? Windows defender?

I can definitely see why bot needs a "slice" button. There is some serious bug going on there. Bot you know you can just not load the model until all your settings are ready, right? That's a work around. But I'd first try disabling all antivirus software which might be delaying the launch of the slice engine.

 

[pm_dude 27]

Or move the object so it become gray (out of the build area). It wont trigger the update if no valid object is on the build plate

 

[Daid 306]

Not yet, the UM2 firmware issue is a bit more pressing.

 

Just looked at the movie now, that really looks like a bug somewhere.

Can you check if the log says anything "odd". The log can be found in:

C:\Users\[username]\.cura\[version]

(As of 14.12, before that it was in the install directory, but that was causing some unrelated issues)

I'll do some tests tomorrow to see if I can reproduce it. (Now it's time for sleeping)

 

[gr5 2,203]

CuraEngine.exe is the one that you need to tell the virus scanner to ignore.

But before you do that - you should disable virus scanner completely just to see if it makes a difference. Because having it ignore one file might not be the fix. Or virus scanner might not be the problem but the only way to know for sure is to disable it completely for a few minutes while you test out cura.

 

[Daid 306]

I've been investigating the code that could be causing this. And I've made this minor patch:

https://github.com/daid/Cura/commit/a328913ca39f508e8f15719a53b3916bc56e8ff0

The old code could explain the behavior that bot is seeing. Running an RC build right now.

 

[Daid 306]

http://software.ultimaker.com/Cura_closed_beta/

RC2 might fix the problem bot is having. I would love to know if this helps you. As these are exactly the type of bugs I rather fix then adding the manual slice button.