Simplify3D User Forum

Oatz1x wrote: I just looking to have this come out as smooth as the case.

Since the large surfaces are actually curved there is only two options as far as I can tell to get both of those surfaces to be smooth:
1) Use soluble support material such as HIPS or PVA.

2) Flip the part 90 degrees and print it with the long edge facing the bed. You will need support under that edge and that edge will need to be cleaned up. There obviously is more of a chance it can tip over during printing.

Festus440 wrote:

TenKOhms wrote:which slicers do you do this in?

The Stratasys software has had this feature for years. The new Craftware (beta) slicer has it also.

The stratasys software doesn't export G-Code and is bundled with their printers, I believe. CraftWare is new, it sounds like dennisjm uses other slicers that have the "lay flat" feature, I don't know of very many slicers, so looking to see which ones he uses!

For OP's model I think a Y-Rotation of -1.5 and X-Rotation of .5 looked the best, but it's highly subjective and I didn't try printing it. After applying those adjustments, hit Center and Arrange, looked pretty good, after if it's still not 100% flat, you could also add about -.1mm or so to the z-offset (double-click part to edit it's rotation and offsets) and it will print flat.

I only mentioned Stratasys to illustrate that the concept isn't new.

Cura has the feature also and it "appears" to do a good job in this case. Here is the first layer after using the lay flat option: I've never actually printed anything with Cura yet but I track it's progress on their forum.

TenKOhms wrote:The stratasys software doesn't export G-Code and is bundled with their printers, I believe. CraftWare is new, it sounds like dennisjm uses other slicers that have the "lay flat" feature, I don't know of very many slicers, so looking to see which ones he uses!

Makerbot Desktop and ReplicatorG have had this feature since I started using them.
Move has a button to put on the platform which brings a model down to touch the platform.
Rotate has a button to lay flat, which turns the model so that as much as possible of the bottom surface touches the platform.
The combination of the two saves me a LOT of time when someone gives me a custom STL file that I didn't design myself. When I design myself I know which face matches the print bed and I start designing with that in mind. Other models often don't do that and worse, they have some weird angled edge that actually would be the best one to print off of, but you have to manually figure out that it just happens to be 32.35.

Makes me use Makerbot instead of S3D now and then even though I paid the doh for S3D.