Process window and slicing preview window side-by-side

[TMeyer]

Dear all,

since several days now I work with S3D (3.1). The preview is really helpful to analyze the print process in advance.
What is really annoying is that I cannot change settings like 'Fill density', 'No. of perimeters, etc. without closing the preview and entering the process settings and re-entering the preview window.
What I would like to have is a side-by-side view of process settings and preview window.
This would make it much more easy if I change e.g. 'No of perimeters' I immediatley could see what effect it has.
Now I have to switch forth and back between both windows which is not very comfortable.

In the meantime it would be also great if S3D could remember the last layer I watched / examined.
E.g. if I have an issue on layer 47 I quit the preview window. Then I do some tweaking in the process window and open the preview again to see if the tweaking has brought some improvement. But the preview shows the last layer every time so I have to move the sliders back to layer 47 which is really time consuming and disturbes the tweaking / checking preview process.

Lets say one day we will have this side-by-side view of process settings and preview. Then each modification of any process setting will cause that S3D recalculates all layers. If it is possible (maybe by activating a new option 'calculate only current layer') the preview should calculate and show only the one layer I am intereseted in. So I immediately can see if the tweaking causes the right result in the specific layer.

Thanks...

[TMeyer]

Hi,

what do you think about this feature? Is it clear what I mean?
In short again:

Put printing options/settings and slicing preview into one single window.
On the right side the settings (with tabs etc.) and on the left side the slicing preview.
So if you change something in the settings you can immediately watch the result on the left side in the slicing preview.

With this you don't need to close the slicing window, change settings and reopen slicing window and move to same layer anmore!
This would increase the speed of tweaking settings a lot!

Other software like e.g. Cura do it this way

Hope it is more clear now.

[dorsai3d]

If they did this, I hope it would be able to be disabled. I like not having to wait for everything to slice every time I touch a setting. Once you get familiar with the settings, you'll only need to glance at the preview to make sure that you're printing what you want.

Even with a fast slicer like this, some things can take 30sec+ to slice, and how quickly would you get annoyed if that happened every time you changed a setting? Enable support, wait 30sec. Add dense layers, wait 30 sec. Change layer height, wait 30 sec. Getting annoyed just typing it....

[TMeyer]

@dorsai3D,

To avoid waiting for bigger objects to slice completely I already suggested that S3D should slice only the layer which is currently on top or currently selected or even a range of layers only (I don't know if this is possible).
Often I have a problem only in a certain area of layers let's say layer 175-layer 204. Then S3D can only slice these 29 layers so one can immediately see if the changes have the right effect.
As you said it should be possible to enable/disable direct slicing after a setting was changed so everyone can decide.
Since S3D slicer is very fast this feature could be very helpful in many cases.

[d353rt]

The problem with slicing taking time could easily be done away with by indicating that the part is out of date (colors, tooltip, overlays) while the slicing is done in the background. Another option would be to have a button to switch the default model view between either preview or model manipulation (what it's now). Replace the prepare to print with the start printing/save to card buttons when in preview mode.
Or just make the process list available in the preview and do the indication and background slicing thing.