Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Why whenever I create a physical printer I end up with a user preset definition, and if I delete the user preset it also deletes the physical printer. More over, only the physical printer can be configured to use OctoPrint. Can anyone explain to me why this is?
When I goto slice an object and I select a user preset printer, I do not have the option to send it to OctoPrint.
Thanks.
Best Answer by FoxRun3D:
It is working as expected. The Printer Settings user preset defines the attributes of a printer. The Physical Printers preset then adds on specific connection information for an actual printer. If you have only one printer (of a given type, Mk3S, Mini etc), it's a one-to-one relationship so kind of superfluous. If you have more than one printer, the situation changes. You can assign a printer user preset to multiple physical printers. In my case, I have one user preset for "My Mk3S+", which contains custom startup and end gcode, and it is assigned to both my printers, they now share the same custom gcode. You can also assign multiple user presets to any one physical printer, so each of my printers has user presets for the standard 0.4, but also 0.25, 0.6, and 0.8 mm nozzles assigned to it. This purpose of the whole system is to allow you to define custom presets that are applied across many printers with different connection info.
Well, that's how it works, but I'm not saying it's optimal. Certainly for one printer, it feels sort of superfluous even though you could still get some benefit out of it if you had several nozzle profiles. But I consider this an aspect of Prusaslicer that could be significantly improved. For one, the whole drop down menu becomes unwieldy. I have only 4 printers but already have 12 printer user presets and 10 physical printer profiles. It's a lot of scrolling and easy to pick a wrong one. A super simple improvement would be to put the physical profiles on top of the menu, and have the user and system presets below. Or have some sort of "Favorites" menu. Or change the workflow to only show the printer user presets for slicing, and then have a Send to Printer button that shows a list of available physical printers.
Or circumvent it all by not creating physical printers but use Octoprint, Astroprint etc, to determine the physical destination of an uploaded gcode file. Just sometimes it's very convenient to simply send a print job directly from the slicer...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
It is working as expected. The Printer Settings user preset defines the attributes of a printer. The Physical Printers preset then adds on specific connection information for an actual printer. If you have only one printer (of a given type, Mk3S, Mini etc), it's a one-to-one relationship so kind of superfluous. If you have more than one printer, the situation changes. You can assign a printer user preset to multiple physical printers. In my case, I have one user preset for "My Mk3S+", which contains custom startup and end gcode, and it is assigned to both my printers, they now share the same custom gcode. You can also assign multiple user presets to any one physical printer, so each of my printers has user presets for the standard 0.4, but also 0.25, 0.6, and 0.8 mm nozzles assigned to it. This purpose of the whole system is to allow you to define custom presets that are applied across many printers with different connection info.
Well, that's how it works, but I'm not saying it's optimal. Certainly for one printer, it feels sort of superfluous even though you could still get some benefit out of it if you had several nozzle profiles. But I consider this an aspect of Prusaslicer that could be significantly improved. For one, the whole drop down menu becomes unwieldy. I have only 4 printers but already have 12 printer user presets and 10 physical printer profiles. It's a lot of scrolling and easy to pick a wrong one. A super simple improvement would be to put the physical profiles on top of the menu, and have the user and system presets below. Or have some sort of "Favorites" menu. Or change the workflow to only show the printer user presets for slicing, and then have a Send to Printer button that shows a list of available physical printers.
Or circumvent it all by not creating physical printers but use Octoprint, Astroprint etc, to determine the physical destination of an uploaded gcode file. Just sometimes it's very convenient to simply send a print job directly from the slicer...
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Ok, thanks.
I think I understand now. I just have one printer so it seamed completely redundant.
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
So just to check. If I have 4 nozzle profiles, and 3 quality levels for each (so 12 profiles) and 10 printers, I would have 120 listed?
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Not quite. You'll end up with 40 entries under Physical Printers, one for each combination of printer name and nozzle size ("P1 * 0.4 nozzle", P1 * 0.8 nozzle", etc). Plus 3 quality levels under Print Settings. Those will change based on the physical printer selected and only show you the profiles for the nozzle size chosen.
At least that's how it works for me. I wish there was a way to simplify it more. I can see ways how they could have simplified it. Under the Printer dropdown only show User Presets, and then have a separate drop-down for "Physical Printer", with entries for each connection. So you'd pick a nozzle size preset from Printer, and an actual printer with IP address from Physical Printer. Or instead of a separate Physical Printer dropdown, you could be prompted to select one from the upload dialog. Probably cleaner because people who haven't set up any physical printers would never see a separate dialog or dropdown menu.
Alas, that's not how it works today.
One alternative is to not set up physical printers and save Gcode files, then upload them to PrusaConnect or Octo and send them to the respective printers from there, rather than directly from PrusaSlicer. Keeps Prusaslicer clean but forgoes the direct send to printer.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
I don't know, never tried such a combo. I have given up on PS. PS has a great user interface and is great in how it organizes profiles (other than the printer profiles), but it severely lucks when it comes to control and print quality. Even though I hate Cura's user interface as a whole, and how it handles material profiles, it's far superior to PS when it comes to available settings and controlling prints. If PS ever was to incorporate the same control as Cura, and given it's much superiors interface to Cura, I'd switch on the spot. PS also creates more efficient gcode quite often, reducing print times. I only print fictional parts that need to be accurate and strong, and Cura just does a much better job at that. If PS does the job for you, than it is much easier and more logical then Cura and easier to work with.
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
OK, I see now. I took a risk and backed everything up, and started from scratch.
So when I take 3 system nozzle profiles, and then customise them, I have 3 system and 3 user profiles.
I then have a printer on 192.168.1.1 with API code=ABC
and another printer on 192.168.1.2 with API code=DEF
Instead of saying "take profile 0.6 and send to printer 1" or "take profile 0.25 and send to printer 2"...
I have 6 printer profiles covering all options....
I think the reason must be that you can then customise them as well... so if printer 2 has a quirk on 0.25 that requires more retraction, I can do that, and if it were the way you and I are thinking, it would change that parameter for ALL printers. So it sort of makes sense, but also leaves one with a confusing list until you get your head around it. Then I will forget in 2 weeks, but will be able to come back to this post 🙂
Thanks for the info!
RE:
I think the reason must be that you can then customise them as well... so if printer 2 has a quirk on 0.25 that requires more retraction, I can do that, and if it were the way you and I are thinking, it would change that parameter for ALL printers. So it sort of makes sense
Yes and no. The only thing the Physical Printer dialog configures is an address and access method. You can't say "for P1, change retraction". You'll have to set up a different Printer Profile with a different retraction length for that nozzle size (which is independent of any specific printer), and you would still have to allocate it to a physical printer. You'd still have the same number of physical printer profiles (P1-0.25, P1-0.4, P2-0.25 modified, P2-0.4, etc), but also now an extra Printer User Preset for the 0.25mm modified. This would still work as I suggested with my ideas in the previous post, you'd just have to remember that P2 needs the modified 0.25 mm profile. So I guess yes, the way they do it now doesn't require you to remember but for me it feels it makes life harder for the more common cases where the printers in a farm are more or less the same. And if they're not, may God have mercy with you…
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Oh,you're right, it sort of looks like you can in the settings interface, as they are listed separately, however if you change the settings by selecting a physical, it also changes the user preset...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Hey Fuchsr,
Id love to hear more about your thoughts on the profile management in prusa. Specifically about the drop downs. It is only a UI issue of displaying too many options or is there anything else your interested in seeing?
- Trevor
RE:
I came here with the same question as the original post as I've purchased some different nozzle sizes and it seems odd that I have to have do define a physical printer for each nozzle and also re-populate the connection information.
It seem more natural to me (or object oriented, to use a software development term) to define a single physical printer, including the connection (via API key) and then be able to switch between system presets assigned to it when I change nozzles. So one drop down list picks the printer preset, including connection information, and a second drop down populates to show the valid presets, i.e. nozzle sizes and other setting differences, that can be selected for that physical printer.
Cheers
PS: I have PrusaSlicer v 2.7.1 and do not see any options for user presets.
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
d it seems odd that I have to have do define a physical printer for each nozzle and also re-populate the connection information.
No, you don't. One physical printer can have multiple nozzle configurations attached to it:
The secret is the little plus sign to the right of the printer name on top, which let's you attach multiple printer user presets to a physical printer. You do have to set up a printer preset per nozzle, though
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Id love to hear more about your thoughts on the profile management in prusa. Specifically about the drop downs. It is only a UI issue of displaying too many options or is there anything else your interested in seeing?
For me, it's mostly about the user experience. The way it is done creates unnecessary clutter: when I click on Printer in the right pane, I see about 20 System Presets, then 25 or so User Presets, followed by about 30 Physical Printers. And that's just a "mini" farm of 6 printers...
There's a simple approach that looks very easy to implement:
Why not let me hide the System Presets, which I hardly ever touch, and the User Presets, which I may change occasionally but not that frequently.
Or even easier, at least reorder them, so the physical printers come first and system presets last.
Or, as I suggested before, flip the whole paradigm, use user presets for slicing (because that's the same for each physical printer anyway), then on the Send to printer form have a drop down menu of all physical printers that the chosen preset is tied to. Still requires though to connect printer profiles with physical printer information, but that can't be avoided.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Id love to hear more about your thoughts on the profile management in prusa. Specifically about the drop downs. It is only a UI issue of displaying too many options or is there anything else your interested in seeing?
For me, it's mostly about the user experience. The way it is done creates unnecessary clutter: when I click on Printer in the right pane, I see about 20 System Presets, then 25 or so User Presets, followed by about 30 Physical Printers. And that's just a "mini" farm of 6 printers...
There's a simple approach that looks very easy to implement:
Why not let me hide the System Presets, which I hardly ever touch, and the User Presets, which I may change occasionally but not that frequently.
Or even easier, at least reorder them, so the physical printers come first and system presets last.
Or, as I suggested before, flip the whole paradigm, use user presets for slicing (because that's the same for each physical printer anyway), then on the Send to printer form have a drop down menu of all physical printers that the chosen preset is tied to. Still requires though to connect printer profiles with physical printer information, but that can't be avoided.
So its mostly just a UI problem for you, being overloaded with info? I do like the idea of having the physical printers separate from the profiles. Just send a profile and job to a specific location.
On a separate note, what are your thoughts on the profile stacks in general? Do you think they work well or leave something to be desired? Have you ever used curas profiles. Similar but work more on an override structure.
I appreciate your response!
RE: Physical Printers vs. User presets?
Thanks @fuchsr . I have just one printer and 4 nozzle sizes so my printer list only contains 8 entries which is manageable.