kurtnelle
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:38 pm

Optional Keep out

In electronics cad there are sections of the board that you can mark out as "keep out". This keeps components and traces from being placed within that zone.

Yesterday, I needed to print 27 of the same small objects one after the other. To do that I had to drag and drop the stl file into the software 27 times. Then I had to create 27 processes, and then associate each process in turn with the 27 objects on the bed. I used the Center and arrange button to center and arrange the components. After exporting the job and starting the print, the first 2 went down fine. I use and Anet A8 and the clearance I selected was 5mm. As is turns out, by the time the 4th object needed to be printed, the nozzle of the printer impacted the 3rd object and caused the object to stick to it. The distance between the objects in the y direction was less than the width of the nozzle :cry:

Can we have an option that causes the center and arrange function to keep the objects further way from each other by some distance (which I've taken to call the keep out range).
wirlybird
Posts: 1374
Joined: Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:32 pm

Re: Optional Keep out

I think Flashprint has a feature like this. When I do an auto arrange it asks for a "distance" and defaults to 2mm. I always assumed this created a boundry around each part.
Seems it would be a reasonable easy thing to implement.
S3D-Jake
Posts: 1052
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:45 pm

Re: Optional Keep out

Thanks for the excellent feedback, guys! We've got a few other threads already discussing improvements to the Center and Arrange button. I'll keep an eye on this for new suggestions to note for our development team.
"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."

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