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Generalized Slicer Pipeline

Posted by solijohn

solijohn

Generalized Slicer Pipeline
March 27, 2014 10:30AM

Registered: 10 years ago
Posts: 6

Has anyone ever made a graph of a general slicer pipeline?

I have seen a great many slicers, and it sometimes unclear what the over arching organization is until the source code is read.
Or are slicer implementation details so varied that this is not a worthwhile exercise?

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samp20

Re: Generalized Slicer Pipeline
April 03, 2014 06:39PM

Registered: 10 years ago
Posts: 115

The pipeline of Cura is fairly simple to understand. This is what it does (simplified):

Optimises the model by creating an index of which polygons are adjacent.
Slices the model into a list of 2D polygons for each layer
Generates a support map from the slices
Calculates the layer parts such as perimeter and infill from the slices and support map.
Converts the layer parts into G-Code

I'm not sure how other slicers compare to this. Step 4 is where the biggest variations are likely to be between slicers.