Simplify3D User Forum

Varying infill percentage based on distance from walls, feature size, curvature, etc.
Look at the way any FEA meshing software works and you will know what I mean. Especially Cartesian 3D meshing.
Distance from walls is by far the easiest and I believe robust enough method to determine infill density.
For example you can specify minimum and maximum infill percentage and gradient. The software then computes infill percentage based on criteria as mentioned above.
Another approach is to be able to import 3D mesh files and map the mesh density to infill density.
I believe this would be far easier to implement as there will be no need to work on meshing algorithms. Just use other meshing software, export/import in a widely supported format and generate the infill based on mesh density. Not a standalone solution, but better than nothing.
Either way the resulting infill should achieve both material and time savings as well as stronger prints.
Very advanced code for 3D meshing has been available for years now, including free open source solutions, and I'm really puzzled as to why no slicer implements such a feature to date.

+1 : In addition to walls, the roof: Would allow you to have a small infill in the internal volume of the print, but as you approach the roof start to increase it to help support all the fine detail. Think of a topo map: You need something at the base of the valley to hold it, and it's overkill to set a high infill for the whole thing. You can setup multiple processes to vary this, but since they're layer dependent, it doesn't work if you have valleys at radically different layer heights.
Basically, if you could use the external supports on the interior of the print

AK_Eric wrote:+1 : In addition to walls, the roof: ...

Yes. When I say walls I mean the outline of the part, including top, bottom and any internal cavity outlines.

Love the idea. It should help keep roofs looking nice without sacrificing roof layers that just fall through the model.

EDIT--Ok, I've played with layer level process adjustments, and It's good, but it assumes I know what I'm doing. Good enough for me right now, if I have even level heights. If I do a design like a castle or a mountain range, with peaks or heights at different levels, this doesn't work as well.

A variation would be to simply delete infill where it's not needed for support. Essentially internal support structure.

1) I believe Slic3r calls this "Only infill where needed". This could be calculated by an angle option similar to that used for generating support.
2) Being able to generate infill with a dynamic percentage based on an angle option and a max/min setting would also be cool as it could still provide some internal support but at a lower percentage. For example, min = 10%, max = 30%, angle = 50 degrees; it would use 10% infill for anything below 50 degrees but switch to 30% infill for to support areas of the model at or above 50 degrees. The way this could be combined with the existing infill option is to have the existing infill option as the min infill and make the angle and max setting optional on the Advanced tab. This would mean less top layers could be specified as they'd have better support.