[ADDED] More options for stronger infill.

[TenKOhms]

Yes I'm still waiting for the hex infill. Starting to wonder why I paid for this software if they don't listen to our requests. I made a request back when this thread started and still no hex infill.

sooo... a TON of the newest features in the latest releases have included forum requested features... It seems like they listen to requests to me, and although I wouldn't mind having the option of honeycomb infill, I would much rather the myriad of features they've taken the time to implement over an infill option. Actually, seeing the speed and quality increase of rectilinear, where instead of taking all the time of doing zig zags in induced vibrations from zig zags, the straight lines work much better, IMO. With the addition of the infill extrusion width, you can make your parts plenty strong.

At first they wouldn't do it because they thought hex fill was patent.

Please, please, please someone show me where the s3d devs wouldn't implement it because they thought hex fill was patented

I would have to agree with the one that said the programmer might not be smart enough to figure it out.

you're the first person I've seen propose the theory developers of, IMO, the fastest model slicing engine I've seen are not smart enough to figure out how to code zig zags inside of a model.

Even 3D Slicer which is a Open source slicer created in 2006 figured hex infill out. Come on S3D. Listen to us!! I might try 3D Slicer software.

please dont go

[jimc]

[BaronWilliams]

Being a software engineer myself, I would imagine that one of the critical things to keep the business side of Simplify3D expanding is for the engineers to concentrate on supporting new and popular hardware. If the software only supports outdated hardware, it will not continue to sell. So I think this is a major reason why some of the more complex requests get pushed off to the future. You need to work on what pays your bills FIRST, and then work on all the extras. Having Simplify3D add direct USB printing support for the FlashForge Dreamer, which I use, was a better feature to add in my opinion than new infill features. By doing that, they've expanded their potential customer base by quite a bit. They just recently added support for the Dremel as well. That's a smart move. That's becoming a hugely popular printer.

Imagine what it's like to be the engineers working on Simplify3D. They get hundreds of requests for things, and only have X amount of time to implement new features per release, if they did them all, they would be programming for years. They have to pick which features to add, and skip the rest, and, like I said, what pays your bills should be added first, and then move on to the other things.

I would like to see Simplify3D open up the ability to add plug-ins made by third parties. That way, software engineers like myself could add features that the Simplify3D team doesn't have time to focus on. But that's probably not going to happen. That's more likely to happen with open source projects.

[nevarore]

Patent on honeycomb is just an excuse. S3D could implement a cross pattern on the same layer without any kind of patent.
Just -45, 45 on the same layer. Is that so hard ?

I agree with BaronWillams. Old customers have no power face to new opportunity of the new 3d printer market.
Complaining on 3D forums is all what we could do

>>> "With the addition of the infill extrusion width, you can make your parts plenty strong."
NO,NO,NO !!! Wrong !! It's a workaround and it doesn't work in case of small pieces !!! You could also print with a 100% infill !!!
Try to print a pyramid and you will see the top of your pyramid with a 200% infill extrusion width ! just a blob of melting filament ....

[JFettig]

Being a software engineer myself, I would imagine that one of the critical things to keep the business side of Simplify3D expanding is for the engineers to concentrate on supporting new and popular hardware.

I'd much prefer that a slicer software concentrate on slicing, not working on hardware, most printers print great of a SD card, not sure why anyone would want to print from a buggy USB connection anyway??? They have a long ways to go as far as slicing goes, making a printer control interface work universally should be second in my opinion.

[KeyboardWarrior]

Being a software engineer myself, I would imagine that one of the critical things to keep the business side of Simplify3D expanding is for the engineers to concentrate on supporting new and popular hardware.

I'd much prefer that a slicer software concentrate on slicing, not working on hardware, most printers print great of a SD card, not sure why anyone would want to print from a buggy USB connection anyway??? They have a long ways to go as far as slicing goes, making a printer control interface work universally should be second in my opinion.

I could not disagree with this statement more

[JFettig]

Without a doubt its a good slicer, but it can be soooo much better. I come from the world of real CAM software and many improvements can be made. First and foremost is the fact that every time something with new features is released, there is a bug in old features, first it was thin walls, then last release was rafts, so far I haven't found anything in the latest. I had to manually design rafts in the last revision and that was one of the most annoying things I've experienced.

Things that need a lot of improvement:
Infill
dense mesh tool pathing
support interface and structure
multi-extruder support

[laird]

Being a software engineer myself, I would imagine that one of the critical things to keep the business side of Simplify3D expanding is for the engineers to concentrate on supporting new and popular hardware.

I'd much prefer that a slicer software concentrate on slicing, not working on hardware, most printers print great of a SD card, not sure why anyone would want to print from a buggy USB connection anyway??? They have a long ways to go as far as slicing goes, making a printer control interface work universally should be second in my opinion.

Given that S3D is already a great slicer - better at almost everything than other slicers - the new features that are being talked about are more "nice to haves" than fundamentals. So I think that it was more valuable for them to add support for x3g (Makerbot-style) printers, for example, because that made S3D 100% valuable to owners of several lines of very popular printers, which is more "value added" than if they make the app 1% more valuable to all users. And they should be maximizing "value added". Of course, once they support all of the popular printers, the value adding less and less popular printers goes down, so the balance for R&D should focus on enhancing the app, of course.

[laird]

Patent on honeycomb is just an excuse. S3D could implement a cross pattern on the same layer without any kind of patent.
Just -45, 45 on the same layer. Is that so hard ?

I agree with BaronWillams. Old customers have no power face to new opportunity of the new 3d printer market.
Complaining on 3D forums is all what we could do

>>> "With the addition of the infill extrusion width, you can make your parts plenty strong."
NO,NO,NO !!! Wrong !! It's a workaround and it doesn't work in case of small pieces !!! You could also print with a 100% infill !!!
Try to print a pyramid and you will see the top of your pyramid with a 200% infill extrusion width ! just a blob of melting filament ....

I think you might not understand what infill extrusion width does. If you set it to 10% infill with extrusion width 200%, it makes the infill 2x as wide as the default width, but spaced twice as far apart, so it's filling 10% of the interior - just with fewer, stronger infill walls. IMO, the default width is too thin leading to the infill breaking up at high speeds, so making it thicker works a lot better for me. And alternating layers with thick lines at right angles prints faster, and is as strong, as printing a grid on each layer. So while I would still like to see hexagon fill as it is stronger (though slower), the alternating 45/-45 degree infill works well with the wider extrusion width. I think the thicker lines bond even when every other layer.

[BaronWilliams]

These are just some of the optional infill patterns found in other slicers:

* convex
* rectilinear (we have this!)
* concentric (we have this, but only for external infill)
* honeycomb (many WISH we have this)
* hilbert curve (really? what's this for?)
* octagram spiral (bizzarre!)
* triangle
* sharkfill (no kidding! it actually looks like little sharks!)
* catfill
* morroccanstar

Are you envious yet? Should I go on? Other slicers are advancing to include all sorts of infill options. Sometimes strongest is best, sometimes beauty, and sometimes speed. Options! options! options! We need more options!

Sharkfill is a fun infill, especially for transparent parts. Things like this are little extras that aren't essential, but can bring a little pizzaz to an otherwise dull looking print. If we can have custom infill, people could make all sorts of beautiful infill patterns.

I am hoping for custom infill. That way Simplify3D can blow the others out of the water. We'll see if the engineers are up to the challenge. If we can make our own infill patterns, and share them with each other, that would be COOL!