PrusaSlicer 2.1.0 - alpha1  

PrusaSlicer 2.1.0 - alpha1

Hi guys,

This is the first alpha release of PrusaSlicer 2.1.0, introducing many many new features, optimizations and bug fixes. Note that this is a testing release for the experienced user 😉 

To let you enjoy the alpha without worries, the alpha builds save their profiles into PrusaSlicer-alpha directory, so you may use the alpha side by side with the current release without ruining your production configuration.

What is new?

• A state of the art Undo / Redo concept
• Custom print bed model with lower GPU memory requirements
• Perspective camera, layer height table with modifier parameters
• SLA printing with the pad around the object
• Wipe tower improvements
• Arrangement of selection only
• Colour change time estimates
• Scale to fit the platform and much more.

Undo / Redo #1024

We took our time to implement the Undo / Redo functionality. First, if we had implemented it earlier, we would have to struggle with the Perl programming language bindings, and we would waste a lot of time later on porting that new code into C++. Second, Undo / Redo is hard to do right, and we took our time to implement a robust and future proof framework. We believe we have the best Undo / Redo implementation in the world of FFF and SLA desktop printing software.

All the actions accessible from the Plater are now undoable including object selection, actions at the sidebar (adding modifiers, changing their attributes), with the exception of switching the print, filament, SLA material or printer profiles. Changing the parameters at the Print / Filament / SLA Material or Printer parameter tab is already undoable with the "Reset to system value" and "Reset to user saved value" buttons, therefore we decided to not put the events of modifying these parameters onto the Undo / Redo stack of the plater.

One can jump over multiple snapshots by clicking on the Undo or Redo button with the right mouse button. As each of the snapshots have an expressive name assigned, it is easy to orient oneself even in a long list of actions.
Undo list

The Undo / Redo stack currently limits its memory usage to 10% of the physical RAM size, and the oldest Undo snapshots are released until the memory limit is met. As we are only storing differences between the successive Undo / Redo snapshots, the Undo / Redo history is nearly limitless on a modern computer. The Undo / Redo memory statistics are now shown by the System Info dialogue.

Some of the PrusaSlicer functionality depends on the active printer technology (FDM or SLA), therefore the active technology is remembered at the time the Undo / Redo snapshot is taken, and the Printer profile is switched to the last active Printer profile of that particular technology when that snapshot is reactivated.

Custom print bed, lower GPU memory consumption & faster startup

PrusaSlicer now supports custom print bed textures and models #1875 #2169 #2496. Both PNG and SVG formats are supported for the print bed texture. The image and model files are assigned to the Printer profile from the "Bed Shape" dialogue, and the full path to these files is stored into "bed_custom_texture" and "bed_custom_model" Print profile variables. We are considering to install the custom bed textures and models into user's PrusaSlicer configuration folder, so that we would store the names of these files without a full path to make sharing the Printer profiles easier.

We received multiple reports of graphics issues due to the excessively detailed print bed textures not fitting into the GPU memory #2299 #2382. We implemented two strategies to cope with low GPU memory issues:

We only rasterize the print bed texture to a high resolution of 8192x8192 pixels if the graphics card supports OpenGL 3.0 and newer, or if there is a Retina display connected to a Mac. Otherwise, a lower resolution 4096x4096 print bed texture is rasterized.
The print bed texture is compressed with this library.
In addition, we improved application startup time and the time to switch the Printer profiles by sending a low-resolution print bed texture to the GPU first, while the higher resolutions are compressed and sent to the CPU progressively as they are ready.

Layers editing

The Slic3r PE used to offer a layer height table, where one was able to set the layer height per object Z span. While we removed this feature from PrusaSlicer 2.0 due to developer time constraints, we are now bringing the feature back with major improvements: One can now not only define a layer height for a Z span, but one can also apply any parameter to the Z span of an object, that can be assigned to the object's modifier mesh. When editing the Z minimum or maximum value of a Z span, the top and bottom planes are visualized at the selected object in the 3D scene. The new feature was mentioned by the "Modeling" with PrusaSlicer? video.

SLA zero object elevation with a pad around the object

In PrusaSlicer 2.0 the SLA supports require a certain elevation of the model if supports are to be generated. This ensures that the support pillars do not collide with the model and the pad can also be generated without complications. In the 2.1 release, we added a feature to set the elevation to zero and the supports and pad will be correctly derived for every model. The generated pad will surround the object with small break-stick connections. The pictures below show the old behaviour (left side) vs the new feature (right side).

If the "pad_zero_elevation" parameter is set, the parameters "pad_object_gap", "pad_object_connector_stride", "pad_object_connector_width", "pad_object_connector_penetration" are used to control the gap between the object and the pad around the object, and to add connectors between the object and pad to improve platform adhesion.

Arrangement of selection only

Arrangement tool can now be used to arrange only a subset of the objects on the bed while keeping the position of unselected objects unchanged. This can be achieved by selecting the set of objects and hitting the Arrange button while holding down the Shift key, or pressing the Shift + A hotkey.

Multi material, Wipe tower generator

The old Wipe tower generator used to manipulate the print speed override of the Marlin firmware to slow down for the soluble and flexible materials. Starting with this release, the print speed override G-code is only emitted to reset printer speed override to 100% over the Wipe tower as the Wipe tower is always printed at the maximum extrusion rate possible, while the maximum volumetric speed of an active filament is respected to limit the print speed for both the normal print and for the nozzle cleaning sequences at the Wipe tower.

In addition, the Wipe tower generator now supports multiple physical extruders, not just the "single extruder multi-material" setup, thanks to @tcm0116 for the initial implementation. The filament exchange sequences (ramming, cooling, etc.) specific for the "single extruder multi-material" mode are disabled for a multi-extruder setup #718 #1944 #2337.

We changed the way how custom filament and tool change gcodes are emitted into the final G-code with the goal to make the custom G-codes more versatile and consistent between the "single-extruder multi-material" and "multiple extruders" setups with the wipe tower enabled or disabled (#560 #1530 #1245). Each toolchange now emits:

end filament custom gcode
toolchange custom gcode; if not provided, a standard tool change G-code (Tn) is inserted
start filament gcode
See the tool tips of "start_filament_gcode", "end_filament_gcode", "toolchange_gcode" parameters for details. Lastly, the Wipe tower now supports filaments with diameters different from 1.75 mm.

Filament retract overrides #480 #844 #2661

PrusaSlicer classifies the FDM parameters into three groups: Print, Filament and Printer parameters. This parameter classification is certainly artificial. While the current grouping may make sense for some printers or filaments, it may not suit other setups well. We were asked to make the configuration more flexible.

With this release, we are allowing the Filament profiles to override all or some of the extruder retract values. The filament retract overrides define the same configuration keys as the extruder retract configuration values, only prefixed with "filament_". For example, the "retract_length" is overridden with a "filament_retract_length" value. A special "nil" value is used if the filament override value is not set, therefore the extruder retract value shall be used.

The PET and FLEX profiles bundled with this PrusaSlicer release already contain filament specific retract settings to reduce stringing. In the future, we are considering to allow the Filament profile to override the bridging speed and bridge flow ratio. Other candidates are the print speed and acceleration values.

There are more changes, bug fixes and translation improvements. For the full changelog, please visit the GitHub:

https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/releases/tag/version_2.1.0-alpha1

Supported printers:

• Original Prusa i3 MK3S MMU2S
• Original Prusa i3 MK3S
• Original Prusa i3 MK3 MMU2
• Original Prusa i3 MK3

• Original Prusa i3 MK2.5S MMU2S
• Original Prusa i3 MK2.5S
• Original Prusa i3 MK2.5 MMU2
• Original Prusa i3 MK2.5

• Original Prusa i3 MK2/S MMU1
• Original Prusa i3 MK2/S

• Original Prusa SL1

Download link:

https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/releases/tag/version_2.1.0-alpha1

Please report any bug here:

github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues

We look forward to your feedback!