Request for an honest update

[JamesDC]

It has been a little over a year since I purchased Simplify 3D and I don't regret making that decision. However, that blue 4.1 symbol at the top of this page has been there for a very long time. Version 5.0 has been mentioned a couple times in the blogs, the last being August of 2020. It is more than obvious that the past year kicked the behind of so many industries and disrupted development cycles the world over. But even before then, the lack of communication has been a stain on your product's name. New to 3D printing, I did a lot of research before I pulled the trigger on Simplify 3D even though there were so many comments on the lack of updates to the product. Even positive mentions came with an asterisk attached that urged potential customers to take that into consideration before buying. I almost didn't make the purchase because of them. And now a year into ownership and well beyond any hope of a free update to this mythical 5.0 I have to ask myself if I would be willing to invest anything more into this product based upon the lack of communication from the developer. There haven't even been any small quality of life improvements made to the software. A couple of times this past year I have found myself frustrated by simple lack of features that the other slicers have. I have given both Cura and Silcer honest shots as a result. The features are awesome if a little unpolished. But I keep returning to Simplify 3D because it just creates better g-code and consistently results in better prints. But good lord guys! How hard is it to do a small update to let my design computer communicate with my printer over my network? You already have a decent enough machine control panel built in but it is useless unless I run a 50 foot USB cable down the hallway of my house to the workshop. Even then I'd have to have a browser open connected to Octoprint or a dedicated camera just to check up on the printer occasionally. This hobby/budding industry is rapidly developing as you have mentioned in the blog and if you are developing along side there sure isn't any evidence of it. So how about a little bit of regular info, eh? Even an occasional blog of "5.0 is coming along great! We are at 50% feature complete and blah blah blah golden sunshine and birds singing happily!" We all know that it is mostly optimistic marketing wank. But it is far better than this total vacuum of information we exist in. Please crack open those lines of communication for us loyal customers. The silence is deafening...and disheartening.

[davedelay]

I hear ya. I purchased at rev 3 and I recall a 5.0 coming soon about 3 years ago. It's a great product with it's issues that can be worked aboud. But what's better?

[gwhite]

I've spend a lot of time using PrusaSlicer (PS) lately. It does some things better than S3D, and I tend to use it for general printing more than S3D now. I don't like the way it organizes and saves jobs internally. They split a print job into Print, Filament & Printer settings, but some of the partitioning makes no sense to me. For example, they have retraction as a printer setting instead of a filament setting.

There are a lot of sophisticated layer-dependent multiprocess tricks that I have used on some fussy jobs that PS can't handle nearly as well as S3D. I occasionally do 3 by 3 grids of test prints to fine tune my settings, each one with a different S3D process. It may be because I'm new to PS, but I think trying to do that would be a nightmare. I still visit the forum fairly regularly in the hopes that V5 will finally surface before S3D goes out of business. Every month there are fewer & fewer posts...

[RoboDLC]

Fortunately, there is a solution for sending your files to your Octoprint enabled printer.
In the "scripts" tab, at the bottom of the window there is another window labeled "Additional command line post processing" or something like that, if you put the following there, you will send your job to Octoprint/Octopi. I have RPi's on all of my printers and use this regularly.

curl -k -H "X-Api-Key: 4CE6142FB71B43668E1AF9FB0F3220B9" -F "select=true" -F "print=true" -F "file=@[output_filepath]" "http://192.168.1.173/api/files/local" {STRIP "; postProcessing"}

The long hex number after X-Api-Key: is the API key you get from Octoprint. Then just edit your IP address for your printer and you are done.

There is another method for sending jobs to a Duet enabled printer as well.
curl -F "file=@[output_filepath]" "maestro/rr_upload?name=gcodes/[output_filename].gcode"
curl "maestro/rr_gcode?gcode=M32[output_filename].gcode"
curl "maestro/rr_disconnect"

Here, you enter the IP address or the network name of your printer where the "maestro" is in the text above. I named my Duet printer maestro in the Windows hosts file, just to see if it worked, you can use an IP address there. There are three lines in this invocation. Some filenames will give this script grief, I forget why, but you'll know because the file will cause errors at the Duet, which will tell you what NOT to use as a filename.

Yeah, both are klunky because while S3D is fantastically tunable, it is also a bit dated and crufty to tune.
I am not impressed with any of the other free or paid for slicers out there compared to S3D, but CURA's tree supports are the greatest things since sliced bread. S3D does a better job with multi-filament prints (with some gcode work in the "scripts" area) than CURA, which is terrible, and the multi-process capability of S3D is unequaled, as far as I know, for complex prints.

But sadly, S3D is no longer being maintained as years of silence have shown us. So promised updates and enhancements are pretty much dead. Still, I'm not going to stop using it because I am irked about their silence!

be well,
DLC

[arhi]

There is another method for sending jobs to a Duet enabled printer as well.
curl -F "file=@[output_filepath]" "maestro/rr_upload?name=gcodes/[output_filename].gcode"
curl "maestro/rr_gcode?gcode=M32[output_filename].gcode"
curl "maestro/rr_disconnect"

for duet2ethernet / duet2wifi I have in postprocessing on the s3d

Code: Select all

g:\gc\rrf3.bat "[output_filepath]" 

and the rrf3.bat is

Code: Select all

@echo off

for %%a in (%1) do (
    set filepath=%%~dpa
    set filename=%%~na
    set extension=%%~xa
)   
set if=%filepath%%filename%%extension%

# G:\bin\curl-7.50.3-win64-mingw\bin\curl.exe -G --data-urlencode "gcode=M30\"%filename%%extension%\"" http://ender5.local.lan/rr_gcode

G:\bin\curl-7.50.3-win64-mingw\bin\curl.exe                        "http://ender5.local.lan/rr_delete?name=gcodes/%filename%%extension%"
G:\bin\curl-7.50.3-win64-mingw\bin\curl.exe  --data-binary "@%if%" "http://ender5.local.lan/rr_upload?name=gcodes/%filename%%extension%"

and the multi-process capability of S3D is unequaled, as far as I know, for complex prints.

check out ideaMaker it looks very similar to S3D, has processes etc etc.. (no tree supports yet no lightning infill yet .. but everything else is there and is rather good). for dual extruder it is as good as S3d, if you have more than 2 extruders s3d is still the king

as for "multiprocess capability" s3d is rather limited, you can only do it by layewr height and by object, others (slic3r started it and all apps decentant on slic3r have it, others like IM also work lika that) have something called "mesh modifier" so you an load modifier STL (or choose one of the basic shapes directly from the slicer) and modify slicer settings inside that mesh modifier so waaaaay more powerfull than s3d processes .. being able to define a process by mesh modifier is long standing feature request for s3d