Slic3r Prusa Edition 1.31.3

Slic3r 1.31.3 - Prusa Edition

Summary:

This is the Slic3r 1.31.3 - Prusa Edition release. This release mainly fixes issues introduced in the 1.31.2 release. Also some long standing stability issues of the Windows 64bit builds were resolved.

This release contains following bug fixes:

• GitHub issues #3, #12, #15, #16, #20
• Fixes of compilation issues on newest Linuxes.
• Prusa3D specific: The Windows 64bit builds should not hang on various occurences, for example #11

Thanks to @flannelhead, @CReimer, @Sebastianv650, @voodoo-bravo, @mgroel and @MartinMajewski for their precious help.

New features:

• A "single layer only" checkbox has been added to the 3D path preview. If selected, the bottom/top layer sliders will be synchronized and only a single layer will be displayed at a time. The checkbox may be toggled with a S key (Synchronize).
• In the 3D path preview, the U / D keys are used to set the last layer displayed. Newly, if the U / D keys are pressed with a shift key, a single layer only is displayed and shifted up / down.

Platform specific issues (Windows 64bit specific)

It has been found out recently, that the Windows 64bit builds compiled with the newest Strawberry Perl hang if a C++ exception is catched and converted into a Perl exception. See slic3r/Slic3r#3561 for details. The latest Strawberry Perl 64bit known to work is quite an outdated 5.18.4.1. This is an unfortunate situation as Slic3r relied on the C++ / Perl exceptions for various validation tasks. Namely, Slic3r hanged when trying to inform the user, that a model does not fit the print bed, or that a sequential print is not possible for some reason.

An automatic test case has been added to Slic3r Prusa Edition to detect the buggy Perl: If using a broken Strawberry Perl, the build will rightly hang on a new test case t\22_exception.t (see #25 for comments and screenshots).

To avoid this problem, one can compile Slic3r using an outdated Strawberry Perl 5.18.4.1. Also Slic3r Prusa Edition has been modified to avoid most if not all of the hang ups by not using the C++ exceptions for validation, but some cases may have slipped under our radar. To compile Slic3r on a broken Strawberry Perl, please set an environment variable

set SLIC3R_HAS_BROKEN_CROAK=1

before running Build.PL. In that case the t\22_exception.t test will be skipped. Also Slic3r will show an error message and die in the cases, where it would hang before. This should not happen as the exceptions issued by the older Slic3r were converted into harmless return values, but if you nevertheless experience an error message "Closing the application", please add an issue to this project "Issues" section. The attached Windows 64bit build has been built with a "broken" Strawberry Perl.

Slic3r Prusa Edition 1.31.2

Slic3r 1.31.2 - Prusa Edition

Summary:

This is the Slic3r 1.31.2 - Prusa Edition release. We at Prusa3D decided to push the Slic3r development forward at a higher pace, meaning that our Slic3r Prusa Edition now contains features, which are not yet implemented in the official Slic3r. The source code of the Slic3r Prusa Edition is freely available, so the authors and maintainers of the official Slic3r are more than welcome to integrate our changes and extensions into the official Slic3r. This release of Slic3r does not contain any Prusa3D specific fatures: All newly implemented features are general, so the community could benefit from our work.

This release will be contained in the Prusa3D drivers package version 1.7.5 available here: http://www.prusa3d.com/drivers/
When using this release of Slic3r with the Original Prusa i3 MK2 printer, following configuration files shall be used: https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r-settings

This release contains following bug fixes:

General

• Fixed a problem in 3D preview of huge models, where the preceding Slic3r allocated oversized OpenGL vertex arrays. After such an incident, the OpenGL driver often bailed out and stopped displaying the 3D scenes.
• Fixed the vase mode with relative extruder coordinates enabled.
• Disabled the automatic extrusion width adjustment for infills as it sometimes picked excessive values. The automatic extrusion width adjustment has a questionable value, as it really works only for rectangles parallel to the infill direction.
• Bugfix: Use Lift-z option for 2nd extruder slic3r/Slic3r#3392 . Thanks to https://github.com/platsch
• Prusa3D specific: The builds missed libraries for the AMF format. Now the AMF format is supported by the Prusa3D builds.

Supports

• Fixed a typo in the automatic detection of overhangs for supports slic3r/Slic3r#2098. Thanks to https://github.com/hyperair
• Fixed a problem in support generator: When the number of interface layers was set to zero, Slic3r would put infinite number of interface layers over top surfaces.

Bridging

• Fixed a problem in internal bridging over sparse infill, where the bridging infill could overflow out of the object shell.
• Bugfix of bridging nearly touching regions. Slic3r would bridge each letter of a label separately, often leading to an infill starting in the middle of a region. Now these close regions are merged before bridging.

Infill

• More consistent perimeter / infill overlap for rectilinear and grid infills. The old Slic3r silently added a 30% overlap to the rectilinear infills, which was inconsistent with the other infill patterns.
• Fixed a bug in fill density of a rectilinear infill pattern. The old Slic3r placed 2x more material into the rectilinear infill then configured.
• Fixed a bug in the Octagram Spiral pattern. The old Slic3r did not fill the space completely for 100% infill.

Following new features were implemented:

General

• Command line only feature: Don't arrange the objects on the build plate. The model coordinates define the absolute positions on the build plate.

Perimeters

• Suppress placement of perimeter seam points on overhangs.
• Ensure vertical shell thickness. This is similar to extra perimeters, but it uses a solid infill to guarantee the vertical shell thickness instead. Cura, Kisslicer and Simplify3D use this strategy.

Infill

• Two new infill types: Triangles and Cubic. The Cubic infill style is the pattern popularized by the Type A Machines.
• The rectilinear and grid infills are now following the perimeter lines for better bonding, and the infill paths are stitched to longer continuous draws, meaning less non-printing moves.

Supports

• Sheath (single perimeter) over the base support was made configurable. Supports without the sheath are less stable, but much easier to remove. Kisslicer has the sheath configurable, Simplify3D does not use a sheath at all.
• Smarter rectilinear pattern for the supports. The new pattern follows the enclosing perimeters and it strives to print the pattern in as little as possible continuous draws.
• Support material could now be constrained to touching build plate only.

User Interface

• "Background slice now" button, initial implementation by @lordofhyphens slic3r/Slic3r#3501
• 2nd scroll bar is shown at the 3D paths preview to set the bottom layer displayed.
• New View menu to set the camera to default positions / orientations.
• Suppress the '- default -' selection of Print/Filament/Printer settings if there is any valid option available. This feature has been asked for by the Prusa3D customers as the '- default -' option has nothing to do with the actual printer and when selected accidentally, it could even lead to a printer damage.
• Implemented filament notes.

Experimental Features

• Extrusion simulator. Under/over-extrusion is visualized in the Layers view by colors. Just press the numeric button 1 to 5 to switch between the simulation modes.
• Pressure Equalizer. Print speed is regulated to limit the slope of the change of the volumetric extrusion rate. The Pressure Equalizer is not finalized yet, it does not work well with gap fill.
• Filament specific maximum volumetric speed (filament_max_volumetric_speed config value). This feature is very helpful when mixing rigid and soft materials.

Following features were removed:

• Vibration Limit has been deprecated long time ago, now we removed it.

Internal changes:

• C++ implementation of the infills to fully replace the Perl implementation. The C++ infills run faster.
• Integration of an intrusive profiler Shiny. The Shiny profiler will help us to pin point the performance bottlenecks in the code.
• Slic3r build has been adjusted to compile with Visual Studio 2013. The Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 is free and offers a superb debugger.
• Slic3r code has been reviewed by Vojtech, commented and FIXME were added where the current code seems to be non-optimal or not correct to Vojtech (which may or may not be true, but these places are worth looking into).
• Debugging outputs by the means of SVG images were added in many stages of the Slic3r calculation to better understand the internal work flow and to help analyze problems.

In the pipeline:

• C++ supports. The current Perl implementation of supports does not respect the gap setting when generating the interface layer on an object, so the supports are difficult to remove. Also the current support generator is very slow.

1.30.0-prusa3d

This build is based on git://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r , version 1.30.0-dev, with minor modifications:

The "Cut mesh" dialog has been fixed to work fluently on Windows.
The Bonjour selection dialog and the bed shape dialogs were fixed to not crash.
Multi-sample anti-aliasing was enabled with wxWidgets 3.0.3-beta.