Feature request -- region-specific extrusion width

[bfishler]

Coming from the CFD world, a lot of the grid meshers have the ability use basic primitive shapes to make a finer mesh in a region of interest where the details are greater.

I thought it'd be really handy to have this feature in this program -- say for instance you have a boxed or cone region in where the details need to be a finer (smaller extrusion width and/or layer height). If there's a print with threads or particularly detailed region (raised picture or logo?), at a particular layer the non-detailed print can be relatively coarse -- and this region slow, with a small width and layer height (I know the layer height option already exists when it's across the whole layer..).

Or if there's a print where in a particular layer, there's a wall that's very think and you want it to be captured with more than just one bead of plastic, the rest of the walls can use a thicker extrusion diameter.

The user could just pick from shapes (box, cone, cylinder, sphere, etc...) and just place/size to specify a region of greater detail.

Also -- I'm not sure if this is already built in, but is there a ramp-up in speed if the nozzle head has to move a greater distance, followed by a slow-down region as it comes near the edge? (Think infill -- if it travels a large distance, accelerate to the midpoint, then begin deceleration until it hits the wall, to minimize overshoot while keeping the print speed up high).

[Simplify3D]

That's a neat suggestion. I would definitely like to see something like this happen! You can actually get somewhat similar results using Creator's ability to define different settings for different vertical sections of the same model. So for example you could print the base of an object with a very large layer height and 20% infill, but print the top of the part with low layer heights, hollow, etc. Just use the Start/Stop printing at height option on the Other tab of the FFF Settings dialog. Create multiple processes for the various vertical segments and Creator will automatically ask if you want to merge all of those FFF processes into a single file. It's a pretty neat ability for problems like this!

And the ramp up speed is the acceleration control that is implemented at a firmware-level. It's pretty good in Marlin so you already get the benefit.