Since the company behind Simplify3D has clearly abandoned its baby, I guess that we will never have a natively compatible version of S3D with the Apple ARM chip M1.
That means that, when the "on the fly translation" job made by Rosetta2 will be discontinued by apple, Simplify3D will not work on Apple's PCs.
However, today we still have Rosetta2 so question is : how does Simplify3D work on the current Apple ARM architecture ?
What gives us this idea is the fact that NO NEW OF ANY KIND is emerging from S3D regarding V5, enhancements, and so on.
The reality is most of 3D Printer users like me have switched to other products, like CURA, PRUSA, you name it, whose features have almost encompassed those of S3D 4.1.
And the fact that no answer is ever produced is a clear signal....
I have rented a MacMini M1 (8 CPU and 16GB of RAM) for a few days so I have been able to test Simplify3D on it : it works nicely
For that matter, PrusaSlicer also works great (it has already been optimized for ARM code), Ideamaker also works nicely via Rosetta2.
Cura, however, still has some bugs but it is usable.
audryhome wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 2021 7:22 am
What gives us this idea is the fact that NO NEW OF ANY KIND is emerging from S3D regarding V5, enhancements, and so on.
The reality is most of 3D Printer users like me have switched to other products, like CURA, PRUSA, you name it, whose features have almost encompassed those of S3D 4.1.
And the fact that no answer is ever produced is a clear signal....
Just a shame none of the other products have a UX/UI as good as S3d.
When I bought S3D, years ago, it was competing with Slic3r and it was absolutely better than any other slicer including CURA, this was the reason why I decided to burn $150. Peace of mind.
Things have changed, and IMO the best slicer now is PrusaSlicer.
It offers more funtionality than S3D, especially in the geometry domain with boolean operators that can help to solve complex issues like suppressing supports on hole while keeping them on close cavity, changing print fill to accomodate stressed parts and so on....
It offers more GCODE flexibility, at printer, filament and impression levels and you can post process in python, which is absolutely brilliant.
Last but not least, GUI is very simple, you can do sophisticated things with simple mouse clicks, and you can even see the GCODE in sync with layer movements, which I had always dreamed to see in S3D.
For all those reasons, I switched to PrusaSlicer 2.5.0 recently, and I do NOT envision using S3D anymore.
Maybe I will write a python code to move factory files to 3MF files or to read them in PS if I need to, but I don't think it's worth the time to develop it, despite reverse engineered factory file format could be somewhat trivial. I have already evaluated the effort to make factory files associatives with my favorite CAD software and this is quite reasonable. Abandoned the project due to S3D silence for nearly 3 years.
So, I have to say bye bye to you S3D, you did a good job guys looooong time ago, but honestly your time is over, and your dishonesty to let people think about a 5.0 while not producing anything else than vaporware with some consultant's help (you will recognize yourself) has achieved my conviction. Hope your OEM agreements will help you to survive but not at end user direct cost.
Last but not least.... PS is FREE, available on windows, mac and linux platforms, not on M1 at the moment but since it is open source, should be done as far as M1 is becoming more and more popular.
Although as Recently as Nov 21 admins were still saying that a product is coming. I agree with most users. That they have been mostly silent for nearly 3 years is a sure sign that S3D is done.
I suspect what is coming is a whole other software if at all. The intent was to create something that ran behind a month to month sub.
Products like Lychee do this. But a big difference in products like Lychee is that the sub is optional sponsorship, and the product is otherwise adware. S3D was always a simple account based lock.
I suspect also it is possible that the market advanced far to fast for the few developers on the project as it was to keep up. To many new things to add that would break other things already added. To a degree this I get since, my boss is an old school programmer. We are constantly chasing bugs and many these days are the fault of Microsoft constantly making changes that are always breaking something. And guess what, Microsoft doesn't care of they break your code, it's your fault they broke it, and support is only given to those who only use the most recent stuff and pay for top tier. Any rational developer locks in and develops in place to minimize the total number of changes. By the time they are done developing the world has moved on and everything is broken again.
Anyway, I have pretty much lost hope of seeing any further update to S3D.
It would be nice if the developer would at least let us know if he's done, and moved on.
But I suspect like many businesses, we will one day try to login and find the site broken, and that will be that as servers go offline.