Confusion about profiles/processes

[Helmi]

Hi,

i'm quite experiences with 3d printing. I worked a lot with Slic3r, Skeinforge, Cura, Kisslicer etc. in the past. I used S3D for a while now but the process handling still confuses me. Maybe i'm just doing things wrong so i thought i'll ask.

I do use Multiple printers with several different Filament types from different manufacturers. First of all i'm unsure what gets saved in the Material, Quality and Printer configuration. I want to be able to easily choose material settings whenever i start a print and be able to setup my values quickly without having to reset single values each time. Unfortunately somet hing like Filament diameter seems not to be tied to Material settings. Why is that? Filament sometimes is 1.73mm and sometimes it's 1.81 - very much depending on manufacturer and type.

It would be interesting to have an overview or any UI logic that tells what setting is saved with what type of auto configuration value.

Also Speed: Is there really noe correlation for Speed to Material or quality? This would be awful as of course you have to print flex filaments way slower than any other. Or probably you want to go slow for a high quality print instead of driving full speed.

Apart from that i'm very happy with S3D but the UI logic for processes and the confusion it brings confuses me a lot.

Thanks for helping,
Frank

[KeyboardWarrior]

My recommendation would be to go to File-->Export FFF Profile then open it with a text editor so you can see the XML tags at the bottom for the Quality, Material and Extruder choices. You can also customize these as you see fit.

[Helmi]

ok, thanks, that helped a bit but it looks like it doesn't solve my main issue: settings like speed, fanspeed and other stuff are tied to the printer, not to the material and/or quality.

How do you guys normally deal with that? Do you setup different printer profiles for that? Something like "Protmaker slow", "Protomaker superfast" or something like that? Or do you really change each single setting everytime you do a print?

[KeyboardWarrior]

ok, thanks, that helped a bit but it looks like it doesn't solve my main issue: settings like speed, fanspeed and other stuff are tied to the printer, not to the material and/or quality.

How do you guys normally deal with that? Do you setup different printer profiles for that? Something like "Protmaker slow", "Protomaker superfast" or something like that? Or do you really change each single setting everytime you do a print?

You can use the "Save as New" button to save a new profile, such as "myPrinter Superfast" or "myPrinter Slow" with all customized settings, or an advanced way of changing things around would be to go in and change the .FFF files.



For instance, if you wanted High, Medium and Fast to have speed adjustments, you would just need to copy+paste the tag for default speed into each as shown below. I added dashes instead of spaces, since the php forum doesn't show extra spaces which makes it hard to read.

--<autoConfigureQuality name="Fast">
----<layerHeight>0.3</layerHeight>
-----<topSolidLayers>3</topSolidLayers>
-----<bottomSolidLayers>3</bottomSolidLayers>
-----<skirtLayers>1</skirtLayers>
-----<infillPercentage>15</infillPercentage>
-----<supportInfillPercentage>25</supportInfillPercentage>
-----<defaultSpeed>3600</defaultSpeed>
--</autoConfigureQuality>

[Helmi]

so you can still use all values in the auto configure section of the xml file even though it is not saved there? that's interesting.

the UI really needs some overhaul then to reflect this. thanks for helping.

[KC_703]

I've never tried adding specific commands to the "Auto-Configure" sections in the xml, but I didn't think it can be added if its not listed. If that is the case, it would be nice if S3D could publish all the parameters within the Profiles which can be modified with the "Auto-Configure Quality/Material" dialog boxes. I think its a great advanced feature for those of us who want to be meticulous.


From what I've experimented with, there are specific parameters which are tied to the profile (ie. Print Speeds). Then the Auto-configure Quality/Material drop down apply presets to the base profile. FanSpeeds (or most Temperature and Cooling Tab properties) can be preset through the "Quality"... for instance if fan needs to be at 50% when model reaches 10mm, the layer which this happens depends on the layer height.

Through some experimentation, certain parameters in the following tabs correspond to the "AutoConfigure" dropdowns:
Profile stores: All parameters, but specifically a base for Print Speeds and Nozzle diameter.
Quality: Layer, Infill, Support tabs
Material: Extrusion Multiplier, Temperature, Cooling tabs


So an "out-of-the-box" way of thinking about Autoconfigure Material, could be based on filament color (ABS_Black, ABS_White), which often varies the extrusion multiplier and extrusion temps. Correspond this with with layer heights specified in Quality (Low=.3, Medium=.2, Fine=.1), and you can achieve accurate temps and cooling for specific heights ("ABS_Black_Fine", "ABS_White_Medium").

[Johncoffee]

I have the same issues as Helmi: I don't understand the UI with profiles and filaments. I just don't get the philosophy behind it it confuses me as well
I've watched several tutorials but am still confused. What and where is the logic behind Simplify 3D

1. If I change from Material A (ABS for example that has a distinct ø of 1.75mm) to B (like PLA which has a distinct ø of 1.70mm) this is not reflected in the parameters, even I change the Material on the material pull down menu.
Each time I change something that is related to the filament (in my opinion, like retraction for Flex filaments) - the profile displays 'modified'. Here, the Material section should display 'modified' since the mentioned retraction parameter is specifically to my filament.

Example:
I want to print out a case for my iPhone. Standard settings e.g normal speed for printing. I want to test 2 filaments:

1. Flexible type extruder temp 220°C / Bed 40°C / 6mm retraction / ø1.75mm / rest of the settings like speed etc. normal
2. PLA semiflex extruder temp 210°C / Bed 60°C / 3mm retracton / ø1.70mm / rest of settings like speed etc. normal.

What do I need to do here? Apparently I need 2 different profiles and two Material settings.

In my opinion 1 profile and 2 material settings should be enough. But this doesn't seem to work.

Question:
- how do you guys manage different filament settings / parameters / profiles in Simplify 3D ??

Thanks for sharing your understanding for this.

John.

[SimpleScott]

First, I want to agree that S3D needs UI improvement in this area, exposing and allowing customization of which parameters are tied to "Material" and which are tied to "Quality". The underlying code supports reading and maintaining additional parameters in each section, but the current UI does not provide any way to manage that.

Until that is available... .

The best workaround is exporting an FFF profile, and editing the Material/Quality sections by adding the desired parameters, then importing that FFF profile back into S3D -- as was described a few posts before this one. Once that is done, any parameters you have added to the Material/Quality sections WILL be honored and maintained by S3D (at least by the current version of S3D; there is no guarantee it will still work in future versions).

For example, using the default profile, I believe the "Material" sections only contain 4 parameters (Temp, BedTemp, ExtrusionMultiplier, FanSpeed). Now let's say you export the FFF profile, edit the XML file to add (for example) filament diameter to each of those sections, then re-import that FFF profile. After that, if you change the filament diameter for one Material, it will NOT change for the others. S3D will now keep a separate, unique filament diameter for each Material, and change it accordingly when you choose a different filament from the Material dropdown.

I went through this process of editing / re-importing, and ended up with a profile that remembers (20) parameters for each Material choice, and (30) parameters for each Quality choice. It makes switching filaments and quality levels much easier.

That is still not perfect.... While many parameters can be directly correlated with either Material or Quality, some need to be tweaked based on some combination of the two. For example, I placed "infill percentage" in the Quality sections of my profile, and that generally works well (less infill for lower quality, faster prints). However, some materials that don't bridge well need higher infill than others to achieve the same perceived quality level. A "Medium quality" print for ABS might be fine with 30% infill, whereas with PETG (which doesn't bridge as well) might need 60% to prevent "sagging" of the top layers over the infill. So if I choose "Medium Quality" and that sets 30% infill, but then I choose PETG as Material --- I will need to manually bump up the infill or number of top layers to compensate for that particular material's characteristics.

Ideally, I would like to see S3D implement some kind of priority-based rules system for these parameters. For example, it would be nice to tell the software that infill percentage is primarily tied to Quality and that for "Medium" the default is 30%, while also telling it that certain materials have a higher "minimum infill percentage" -- so that when choosing a combination of any given Material and Quality setting, the software could intelligently combine the two rules based on the priorities specified.

[Johncoffee]

Thanks a lot for your explanations SimpleScott. They helped me and I'll try the FFF export and will tweak the XML file. I've read about this in the other mentioned thread and thought - it can't be true that such a complicated way is really necessary. I've used Mattercontrol in the past and felt that filament management is way better than Simplify3D as of today.

Well - I'll see how editing the XML will turn out.

Thanks again for your help.

*John*