What does this button do?

[Garyhlucas]

I read everyone's suggestions here that go something like "Use the XBD button to change the way that works" I've had to do manuals for waste water treatment plants that have lots of buttons. Wouldn't it be nice to have a simple list of every function, how to find it, what it does, and WHY you should use it? Seem like a simple enough thing to compile. Look at every screen, write down every function on that screen. Of course this already exists and I've missed it?

[jimc]

no gary you havent missed it. s3d users have been screaming for a manual for months and months. there is nothing other than an unofficial guide done by one very generous member.

[tri-lite]

Gary, you sucked us in with the creative title - what does this button do - because we thought we might be able to provide an answer! Darn. In any event, here's that UNofficial manual JimC mentioned, which is darn good: http://jinschoi.github.io/simplify3d-docs/

[jimc]

haha yeah it would have help if i provided the jin's link. thanks tri

[kobi-s]

Unfortunately the X3G button is not mentioned in this great document.

BTW: under this TAB I see the comment "This section is For MakerBot Printers Only!"
I have the suspicion by changing the Profile to other than Replicator 2 (default config) it is influencing the Firmware of a attached Marlin Controller.
Could somebody form the experts comment on this please?

[Garyhlucas]

Years ago I had a young programmer working for me, doing a program to operate a machine. It was written in assembler and burned into an Eprom. Every couple of days I'd pop in and ask him to explain some of the code he'd just written. If he couldn't look at his code and the comments he had written and explain it to me quickly and concisely what it does, then he had already gone too far. So I insisted he stop programming and go through the code and comment it completely so that six months from now when it isn't fresh he won't waste hours trying to figure out how it works.

That paid off handsomely when a big company hired him away. I turned what was now 800 pages printed out at 80 lines per page over to a new programmer who hit the ground running. The young guy that left told me later that the big company typically wrote all new code when making changes as no on could ever figure out how the old stuff worked!