wbegg
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:51 pm

Estimation Times

I love S3D, but can you guys please do some magic on the next update to get the print time estimates correct? Your estimates are off as much as 50-100% (closer to 100%). I would think if I spent as much money as I spent on a second party software, that the estimates would be MUCH closer than demonstrated. I sell parts, and have to estimate material costs as well as printer time, and you guys are WAY OFF on your estimates. And please don't give me that crap about "Well, acceleration times .... bla bla". Free software does a better job of estimating print time than you guys.

I paid my money, I want results!

Other than my gripes, I love the software. The ability to modify supports is second to none.
prgenovese
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:38 pm

Re: Estimation Times

It's funny, I see this complaint quite a bit for most slicer and printer management software. I've used S3D Slic3r & Cura along with Octoprint to drive my Prusa i3Mk2S. I pretty much only use S3D with Octoprint anymore and I've found both to be pretty darn good at estimating print times. The thing that seems to fool the software the most is when the top 3rd or so of layers are very small, in which case they overestimate the time to finish, but rarely do I see times that are underestimated and never do I see times off anywhere near 100% in either direction.

I have no idea what magic is as work here but it just seems to work OK to me.
rwhite72
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun May 29, 2016 12:02 am

Re: Estimation Times

The print times are pretty much always underestimated by 50% or so. The Cura 2.6 for my Ultimaker is bang on but not as go of a software . Simplify3D is fantastic except for the time estimate which is way short all the time.
Zorgonaute84
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun Feb 07, 2016 7:30 am

Re: Estimation Times

+1 for estimation time.

The issue is more important with dual extrusion process.
MasterFX
Posts: 208
Joined: Tue May 20, 2014 11:23 am

Re: Estimation Times

S3D estimates the printing time without taking any jerk and accelerations settings into account, because the Software doesn't know how the settings are in the specific printer (they are set in the firmware and applied live when printing.
The deviation between estimated time and real printing time highly depends on the printed model (e.g. how many direction changes etc).

I think Cura knows how the accelerations settings are in the Ultimaker so they can be taken in to account for the estimated print time.

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