Tip of the Day 20- G-Code Previewer
Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 1:31 pm
The G-Code previewer is a tool that is extremely important. It shows exactly what the sliced G-Code will instruct your printer to do. This can be really helpful for troubleshooting. For instance, if your print has something that isn't in the G-Code previewer, that would mean something in the transmission of the file, firmware or electronics/mechanics of your printer is causing the differences from the G-Code previewer.
The green dots going down the part at the points at which a retraction will take place. The G-Code previewer shows all the points where retractions will take place as dots/blobs. This can be confusing for new users, who think that these areas that show the location of retractions are actual blobs of plastic, whereas they're not.
**If this part was printed in Vase mode, there wouldn't be any retractions, it would be one smooth extrude**
http://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1999
The red lines going back and forth show the travel moves. These are the moves in which the print head is not extruding, this can be helpful too. If you find a lot of stringing is occurring during these travel moves, you can look into increasing your retraction distance and working with those settings, or modifying your settings so there's not as many travel movements.
The G-Code previewer is extremely important as well for quick testing. For instance, if you're unsure what the raft-offset option does, you could change it from the default 3 mm to 15 mm, and slice to see what the G-Code looks like with the drastic change. Then go back and change the setting back to 3, I did this very often when first starting to use the software to learn about all the settings, since Simplify3D slices very fast, it's a quick way to check and see what changes.
**If this part was printed in Vase mode, there wouldn't be any retractions, it would be one smooth extrude**
http://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1999
The G-Code previewer is extremely important as well for quick testing. For instance, if you're unsure what the raft-offset option does, you could change it from the default 3 mm to 15 mm, and slice to see what the G-Code looks like with the drastic change. Then go back and change the setting back to 3, I did this very often when first starting to use the software to learn about all the settings, since Simplify3D slices very fast, it's a quick way to check and see what changes.