A new hardware accelerated slicer...

Just stumbled upon this.


[webloria.loria.fr]

Has some limitation on what hardware it supports and I've not tried printing anything it generates, but interesting!


Rob

Their FAQ has the following...

Could the produced G-Code break my printer? Bad things could happen, yes. So be careful, check the G-Code, do not leave the print unattended. We never broke our printer, but we are extra careful.

Maybe its not quite ready for prime time

I hate to be negative, I really do. They have obviously put a lot of work into it, but if it only runs on certain Nvidia GPUs, for me it's useless immediately. Why bother developing something most people can't use?

It's not as though you need a GPU to do fast slicing, KISSlicer shows that.

Um...they had to start somewhere? These are not short term projects we are talking about here. They are long term and will take time to get bugs out and ports to other graphics cards. This is all part of being a member of the open-source community. If we waited for everything to be "complete" we wouldn't have any 3D printers sitting at our houses. This is a buggy field, both the hardware and software. I'm really happy to see them trying to do something new.

Using GPU's for compute intensive functions is a "big deal" in tech computing. You only have two basic choices - AMD or Nvidia. You pick one or the other and go with it. Of the two Nvidia seems to have a larger following, so it's probably the best choice in their case.

@Joseph - If your firmware has acceleration set properly, the only ways gcode could break your printer is setting a temperature too high or crashing the hot end back into the part. Repetier Host and others may also be able to display the extrudes and travels to make sure there's nothing dumb.

@KDog - Agreed - they have to prove their prototype in one place before worrying about the many combinations of hardware. I sort of think of the Folding@Home project, where they started with the CPU (where current slicers are now), then to AMD X1xxx series, PS3, nVidia GPU, 4+ core CPU, newer AMD GPU. We'll have faster slicers eventually with enough work put into them - I'd join in to help if I wasn't sick of looking at code from work.

@uncle_bob Technically Intel has the most GPUs installed on PCs, although it is integrated graphics. There's also OpenCL which in theory works on any platform including both brands of GPU and CPU as fallback. However I heavily emphasize theory. Write once, debug everywhere

What an awesome start, I am running an AMD card right now but I can't wait until this thing gets a little farther and I can test it out.

frontier204 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> @uncle_bob Technically Intel has the most GPUs
> installed on PCs, although it is integrated
> graphics. There's also OpenCL which in theory
> works on any platform including both brands of GPU
> and CPU as fallback. However I heavily emphasize
> theory. Write once, debug everywhere

Anyone that is doing any sort of GPU or OpenCL work isn't using integrated graphics, it's AMD and Nvidia. It's gaining a great deal of traction now with apps that need a greater amounts of parallel processing like rendering. If one looks at the new Mac Pro with what is basically GPU daughter cards it's going to be how high end workstations operate. Neat to see it being applied to slicing now.

bobc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> It's not as though you need a GPU to do fast
> slicing, KISSlicer shows that.


It's also a modeler using the lua language. It's like OpenSCAD meets a slicer. I'd reckon that on the consumer side of 3D printing some sort of integrated tool like this will eventually become the norm and very well may be hosted in the printer. Integrate a scanner for good measure and one has a fairly complete standalone machine.

Joseph Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Their FAQ has the following...
>
> Could the produced G-Code break my printer? Bad
> things could happen, yes. So be careful, check the
> G-Code, do not leave the print unattended. We
> never broke our printer, but we are extra
> careful.
>
> Maybe its not quite ready for prime time


I would think it's possible to put in some redundant code to look for abnormalities in the G-Code.

Like returning to a Z coordinate you've already printed to.