In defense of slic3r

A place to talk about slic3r software (http://slic3r.org)
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Vic
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In defense of slic3r

Post by Vic »

I have been reading a lot of reviews about the different slicers and I have tried a few of them. One of the criticisms I've been reading about slic3r is that the tool paths don't make sense and there are a lot of unnecessary moves . On my prints it seems to make sense. The extruder lays down some plastic then moves to another location to allow for the plastic to cool before returning to lay down more. I saw this while printing multiple small pieces and it seemed to make sense. Please excuse me if I am being to naive. Maybe this is something that is already known.
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Tinyhead
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Tinyhead »

My experience, as well as some others, is that it doesn't just do as you say. What you describe makes sense and it does that, but once it's almost done that particular layer, it will suddenly hop around the print a pile of times extruding tiny dots. I'm not sure if it's trying to fill in tight corners or what, but it makes an awful mess.
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by McSlappy »

^ this
I loved my Rostock so much I now sell them in Oz :)
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Renha
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Renha »

but isn't slic3r open source? And anyone who doesn't satisfied with something, could just go and fix it, like one do with 3D printer's hardware?
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Renha
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Renha »

but there are bad things about slic3r too: it written in perl and depends on so many unusual perl modules, so building last version from sources is sooo looong, it takes about 1 hour at 3G internet to install it from arch-user-repository. Why not python :(
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Renha
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Renha »

Else one thing to know: now i have checked slic3r website, and have found this http://slic3r.org/releases/1.1.1:
Changes:
  • Always complete one island at time (perimeter -> infill -> next island -> perimeter -> infill) instead of doing that only when Avoid crossing perimeters is enabled. This leads to fewer travel moves, faster prints and is more consistent with what already happens when a print contains more copies and/or objects
That looks like solution for problem you are talking about, isn't it?
...the tool paths don't make sense and there are a lot of unnecessary moves .
sorry for not just editing single post, i care for rss users who usually doesn't have editings received
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Polygonhell »

The biggest issue with Slic3r over the last couple of years hasn't been features, or even bad toolpaths, it's been bugs, every release seems to introduce new bugs, and random regressions. The problem is it's difficult to differentiate a slic3r bug from a hardware issue, and you can waste a LOT of time trying to identify the issue.
Though I'll admit I gave up on it in the 0.9x timeframe so things could have improved.

The whole it's open source, if you find a problem fix it is specious. Firstly assuming you even have the skill set which most do not, the time you'd need to invest to understand the existing Perl code is prohibitive, and second I have better alternatives I can just use.
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Renha »

Polygonhell wrote:The biggest issue with Slic3r over the last couple of years hasn't been features, or even bad toolpaths, it's been bugs, every release seems to introduce new bugs, and random regressions. The problem is it's difficult to differentiate a slic3r bug from a hardware issue, and you can waste a LOT of time trying to identify the issue.
Though I'll admit I gave up on it in the 0.9x timeframe so things could have improved.

The whole it's open source, if you find a problem fix it is specious. Firstly assuming you even have the skill set which most do not, the time you'd need to invest to understand the existing Perl code is prohibitive, and second I have better alternatives I can just use.
second part of your message explains the reason for the first one. More users just goes to another tools instead of helping to develop one tool (with time to code or donations), more disadvantages tool gets. As a result, we have a lot of good tools instead of one great tool.. isn't great situation, just imagine that way in 3D printing community -- and you'll see that RepRap and Rostock communities slowly disappears from imagined reality, and we have only HP and such companies make 3D printers.
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Polygonhell »

As far as I'm aware all 3 of the primary slic3r's and both the open source ones are primarilly developed by one person each. Slic3r's bugs issue is mostly a result of the developer not testing thoroughly and the rapid rate of releases between 0.7 and 0.9. I'm not knocking the author, what he's doing for the community is great, but I'm also not going to invest a ton of my time in fixing it.

If you want to debate open source philosophy I'm fine with that, I work with a lot of it on a daily basis, some of it with thousands of contributors, the issue is always the same, with VERY FEW exceptions (LLVM springs to mind), it evolves sufficiently to meet the needs of the current primary developers and that's it, documentation is usually poor, and any use case outside of the norm is considered unsupported. The problem fundamentally is the most important customers of the software are the developers of the software, which is an extremely myopic position to be in as a developer.

Slic3rs are complicated pieces of software understanding one and being able to meaningly contribute, would take a lot of someones time and probably some of the original developers time.
I personally am not contributing anything to software written in Perl or Python, I happen to dislike working in both languages.
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Renha
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Re: In defense of slic3r

Post by Renha »

I have a look to Slic3r code, it's well readable, ill try to modify it to help author with it (well, actually code is greatly[\b] readable, i could understand it well although i don't know Perl).
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