Sick of Slic3r

Let me start by saying that I am a big Slic3r fan. I am going to continue to use Slic3r. I recommend that others use the program, make donations to its author, and help write code for the program.



That said; here are my emotionally charged statements about Slic3r's development

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My favorite Slicing program has let me down 3 releases in a row.

I have donated to Slic3r a few times now, and log bugs on GitHub, but the program does not seem to be getting better... Dare I say it has gotten worse?

Version 0.9.1 -> Pressing the delete STL button crashes Slic3r or your computer

Version 0.9.2 -> Does not lift nozzle for first layer, instead letting it drag through your print bed

Version 0.9.3 -> Hexagon infill overlaps perimeters making ugly prints.

Version ALL OF THEM -> No Raft Support

Version ALL OF THEM -> Sh*t Support Structure

New folks will use Slic3r for the first time and then wonder why their PC is crashing, their G-Code is dreadful, the support structure won't come off, and why in god's name is there no raft?

SICK OF IT

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/* Deep Breath

Yes there are other slicing options.

Skeinforge, Cura, Kisslicer (which I have purchased) are all available to me.

Slic3r remains my favorite; I use version 9.1 and navigate around its iniquities with great results.

I truly want to see Slic3r succeed. Sorry for the rant, please support Slic3r's development today!

edited: misspelled Cura

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2012 06:59PM by Idolcrasher.

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FabberForge - Printing Happiness

[www.fabberforge.com]

the only issue I've had is trying to slice the 200k poly Yoda (approx 9.8meg) it would crash my net-book, and then it finally ran all night (7.5 hours) on my quad core system and it finally processed. but i forgot to change retract settings after also updating version. instead of retrying it i looked on-line for solutions and came up with kisslicer [kisslicer.com]

it took less than 3 minutes to generate a 100 micron print for Yoda! so it has some mojo that slicer does not have. slicer is incredibly easy to setup, and kisslicer does not have a lot of documentation, but if it takes 100 times less to compile complex shapes I'm willing to experiment.

so i like cura because prints are so smooth on my machine. slicer is easy to use, and kisslicer well it works great!

It's just under development. The "0." at the beginning of the version number has a precise meaning.

I understand that this cake is half-baked.

The thing I find most unfortunate is that the numbered releases are being pushed out with fatal flaws that receive no mention on the main Slic3r page.

For example, you can go to the Slic3r page right now and you will be invited to download Slic3r 0.9.3...

You will have to discover for yourself that 0.9.3 has broken its ability to produce honeycomb infill. The Perimeters and infill will overlap and jack-up your print. Chances are that you will not come to this realization and just think your printer is on the fritz...

Granted; bad infill and ugly prints are not that fatal an error... but before that, you had to find out for yourself that 0.9.2 will leave your nozzle at 0 height for the first layer (ouch!)

Once a BAD bug is discovered and confirmed it would be nice to have that info pushed out to the Slic3r community... But it is not. Radio silence is maintained between releases.

This is why you will see people on the forums recommending the use of OLD versions of slic3r; I think this is a real shame. The 0.9 releases are quite good... when you know how to dodge the fatal flaws...

Please help the fans dodge the land-mines

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2012 09:59AM by Idolcrasher.

I am very new to 3D printing but I am also having some weird issues with Slic3r. Granted it's not finished and it's free. But I am already at a point (I got into this to produce parts for my business) that I would pay for a polished program. I would be willing to shell out a few hundred dollars for a slicer that just works well with good features.

The company I bought my printer from told me to use 0.7.2b as it was the most reliable. I also installed 0.9.3, today I was trying to slice a fairly high face count part and 0.2.b told me it was non manifold and the resulting file was missing some important shapes in the part. I assumed the file was at fault so I loaded it into Meshlab and it says there are no non manifold edges or vertices. So I loaded it into 0.9.3 and it sliced it without any warnings. It looks better in Pronterface (getting ready to print now) but I have doubts it will print correctly.

I know more and more people everyday are getting into 3D printing and I just can't believe that nobody has perfected slicing yet, maybe it's the nature of the "open source" beast, but I for one would pay for more polished software.

Again I don't blame the developer as he is basically working for free (with donations). You get what you pay for.

tmorris, you can always pay for KISSlicer, or netfabb studio. Those are, I hear, very good slicing programs.

tmorris9 Wrote:
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> The company I bought my printer from told me to
> use 0.7.2b as it was the most reliable.

Proof positive that these fatal flaw plagued, numbered releases are putting people off from using newer versions

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2012 03:00AM by Idolcrasher.

Sadly, software development is still more craft than engineering. It takes time and effort to develop good software. As many as 50% of commercial software projects get canned before going live. Open source projects by their nature tend to have their faults on show. Software often ends up being "tested by the user". I am not sure whether Open Source is better or worse in this regard, I suspect for small projects without a large community the quality is a lot lower than average, but the point with FOSS is that avenue is open to getting involved and improving it.

However, I have been using KissSlicer, which is not perfect, and not FOSS, but many times faster than anything else. I can trial several different settings in the time it takes Skeinforge to do it once.

I'll hang around slic3r, it has flaws, but in the long run it has my vote. yes I'm frustrated by how it runs sometimes, but it is the only slicer that currently processes curves along z height correctly. i can have a stair stepped skein version with skin feature or i can have a properly aligned outside perimeter with 2x height infill with slic3r. what i like about kisslicer is its speed, i don't know how it processes curved z height shapes.

0.72 was probably the best slic3r version, but it won't slice some well formed models. The slicing algorithm was changed in the 0.8xx releases to address that issue and unfortunately most of the subsequent releases have had significant bugs.
It's hard to deliver high quality software, if Sound spent a lot more time testing before release, there would be people complaining about the lack of progress and slow releases.
I've been using KissSlicer as of late, it's stupidly fast, and has usable support.

Upon printing anything using 0.9.2 it is obvious that the release was a failure.

It should have been pulled down immediately. Instead, we got a month of radio silence and everyone had to discover for themselves that the release was a failure... It's agrivating.

PomeroyB Wrote:
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> tmorris, you can always pay for KISSlicer, or
> netfabb studio. Those are, I hear, very good
> slicing programs.

I actually Downloaded KISSlicer and could not get anything to print from it. I don't know what I am doing wrong in it but it won't extrude, the tool paths are there but no extrusion what so ever.

In Pronterface it's all green lines (tool path) and no black lines (printing) and it does exactly that when printing, head moves but no extrusion.

I played with it for around 2 hours trying different things but never figured out how to get it to print.

I just tried 7.2B which some people have mentioned as stable.
Where the 9.x took 45 min, the 7.2B took under a minute to slice one of my bigger projects.

Anything I need to be aware of with the 7.2?

On another note, Slic3r used to be attractive because of the speed and simplicity, but it seems like more and more features are added with every update. I would much prefer to have a simple and stable slicing program, that can do 90% of my files. I dont see why so much work is put into dual extruders when no one is really using them.

Jonas

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2012 11:07AM by jonasl.

jonasl Wrote:
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> I just tried 7.2B which some people have mentioned
> as stable.
> Where the 9.x took 45 min, the 7.2B took under a
> minute to slice one of my bigger projects.
>
> Anything I need to be aware of with the 7.2?
>

0.7.2b has two bugs I know of.

1) It prints the very tip of sharp points as a separate extrusion. This extra part comes right off after printing and does not effect the parts usability and is discarded in newer releases by the software before printing.

2) Sometimes the infill escapes the perimeter on the odd layer. To work around it when you find a model it happens on all you need to do is rotate the model by some amount. I find almost anything between 1-355 degrees is enough rotation.

Other than that it works almost perfect. You do need to have good models (repaired). Also its support does not work very well (I have never found the need for support).

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jonasl Wrote:
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> I dont see why so much work is put into
> dual extruders when no one is really using them.

IMO give it a year or so and single extruder machines will seem old fashioned and limited. Look on Thingiverse and you will see people are already using dual extruders. I'm waiting for RRP to release the three extruder add-on for my Mendel - should be soon.

Andy

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2012 04:17PM by ajayre.

Dual extrusion- Water-soluble support structure has some epic implications.

I think that multi-filament single-nozzle extruders have a good chance of being popular in the hobby world

KISSlicer is a great software, I am using the free version to excellent effect and I also use the support feature, with the flow rate scaled to 70%. When you scale down the flow rate it makes the support much easier to remove but the support is still solid enough to actually work. I would recommend everyone try it.
@tmorris9
See if its outputting for the right firmware (on the gcode tab) and that might solve the "it won't print anything" problem. You could try posting on the KISSlicer forums, maybe someone there will help you in more detail.

See if its outputting for the right firmware (on the gcode tab) and that might solve the "it won't print anything" problem. You could try posting on the KISSlicer forums, maybe someone there will help you in more detail.



My firmware is not listed that I can tell. My printer uses repetier and in the g-code kisslicer shows : Bits From Bytes, 5D relative E & 5D absolute E.

Are there others available I can download? And if so how would I install them?

Thanks!

Hi Andy

Sure there are people using multi extruders, but I would guess its less than 1%. So perhaps they would find another solution.
People are having enough problems getting a single extruder to print nicely, and taking the slicer problems out of the equation would help a great deal.

I will be trying the 7.2B when my new Hotend arrived.


Jonas

>
> My firmware is not listed that I can tell. My
> printer uses repetier and in the g-code kisslicer
> shows : Bits From Bytes, 5D relative E & 5D
> absolute E.
>

You want 5D absolute, it's what almost all reprap firmwares are based on.
The other thing that's a little odd when configuring KissSlicer s the use of rpm for extruder speeds, just pretend everything says mm/sec instead, and tell it you get 1mm/revolution.
It was originally designed for the BFB printers which still use RPM.

jonasl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> People are having enough problems getting a single
> extruder to print nicely, and taking the slicer
> problems out of the equation would help a great
> deal.

I think the majority of 3D printer users have a single extruder working nicely. From my own personal experience I never had any significant issues just my own learning curve. I use Slic3r 0.9.1 and I am happy with it. I know not to delete individual items - no big deal.

Andy

I'm using 0.9.3 now and it is fine for me. I was using 0.8.4 for my mendelmax and it was causing my motors to skip. I thought the ramps needed cooling etc. per all the threads, added a fan etc., just as bad. Was going crazy, slowed it down super slow and still unexplained skipping. Did 2 prints and noticed the prints skipped at the same spot both times where there was no way the motor should skip, so I tried 0.9.3 and all of my prints since have been skip free. I wasted so much filament. I am glad now it is working excellent and producing impressive prints. Just relating my experience with it so far. I really like this software and the fact that it is constantly evolving. My $.02