S3D 4.0 arrives this month

To be honest, I'm making this thread more as a rant then to celebrate the new release, and the other part is hoping that the new S3D FIXES these problems! I have to say I'm very annoyed that since getting S3D last summer, the only update we have had is for some extra printer profiles and languages. I honestly thought S3D was close to throwing in the towel for a bit.

Problems I really hope they fix -

• More options for Support. They are famed for their support structures, but honestly I find the settings lacking. Things like extrusion rate and retraction would be very useful as the support material is often printed slower leading to increased stringing and blobbing. A option for a solid raft on the base of support structures would also be useful. I usually place 0.3mm thick square under my support for added strength but I feel like this could easily be automated in settings.
• Branching support would also be nice. I understand this is more difficult and adds a list of its own problems. I'm very glad they have added options for soluble support in the 4.0 release, but the fact that this is all they are showing off is a bit concerning.
• Bridging settings... what bridging settings? Bridge settings are only applied to infill and not perimeters, meaning that bridges that are not supported on 4 edges ultimately fail.
• Upper layers do not use bridging settings. You have to set ALOT of layers to make up for this, especially if you print low layer heights or wide flat areas. It's not perfect as even multiple upper layers can fail if it catches on the nozzle. applying bridge settings, or unique settings for upper layers would solve this.
• Support (yeah, more problems with support) separation cannot be set by distance, only layers. I find the perfect separation is about 200 to 300 microns. depending on your layer height this is difficult to set.
• Thin wall behaviour is erratic, and the 2 settings given do not change much. I often change perimeters and extrusion width to solve this instead, but these are not adequate workarounds in my view. If the software can detect thin wall areas, why can you not apply different extrusions widths at thin walls?
• pre-set profiles need to be more modifiable. You can only really change a few settings for quality and material. You can edit this in the .FFF profile, but S3D themself have not released a list of commands for making your own and it is not user friendly. Could easily make a UI for this.
• Random slicing issues causing missing layers. Often fixed by exporting file from CAD again with slightly different settings, or scaling it by 0.01%. mildly annoying and easy to miss sometimes.
• I'm sure I've missed some... S3D is great but the lack of support is really frustrating. They rarely reply on the S3D forums.

/ rant over..... I hope S3D 4.0 solves these issues. I'm really not a fan of having to switch between 3 different slicers just to solve basic issues.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2017 09:45AM by Origamib.

I've only tried s3d a few times but for me the issue was how do I have it setup for multiple different printers with different settings?

All in all I always found slic3r to be fine, but the windows version was always very unstable. Prusa slic3r by comparison is excellent and I won't be spending $149 on s3d.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

It is easy to have multiple profiles in S3D, just go to processes and it is the uppermost bar of the window. Click save as new and then both appear in the drop down window, edit either to your liking.

I do a lot of printing, and in general S3D is the best tool I've used although I have not used recent versions of Cura or prusa slic3r. The speed of it and general utility is second to none. The above problems and lack of updates though have led me to consider other slicers...

I’d like much better support for macros in the scripts, and optional scripts for layer change and so on.

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slippyr4
I’d like much better support for macros in the scripts, and optional scripts for layer change and so on.

Would definitely like that. Would be nice if they implemented a method to pause / unpause print or add other gcodes at certain points without editing .gcode file. Should be simple enough seeing as they already have processes at different heights in the model.

Multiple processes for vase prints would be nice (found out this isn't possible yesterday)

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briangilbert
Multiple processes for vase prints would be nice (found out this isn't possible yesterday)

Have you tried importing the same model twice, stack them on top of each other and then set vase mode for each in a seperate process? With each process stop/starting at the heights needed. If this doesn't work, just print the first half and then restart a new print where you want the second process to be. When the print stops just tell the printer it is at z=0 and start again.

S3D 4.0 has addressed nearly all these problems and more! Faith renewed I think... Shall update this thread soon with the results from the new slicer.