You can put the smaller parts inside the spaces inside the larger parts and then use the Merge option to group them, then use Auto Arrange to fit the groups onto the plate.
I started 3D printing in 2014 and found your channel around then. I find most of your videos useful, but I have to say this was the most useful so far for me In recent years. The less useful ones are entertaining and that is good too. A little more on this software would not be a bad thing. I have been using Cura for a LONG time now and this video convinced me to switch. I really appreciate what you do and hope you keep at it. Thank you.
If I knew, I could right click on auto arrange... :) I am using Superslicer most of the time now (klipper support) and am really thankful to Prusa for giving us all these nice features for free. Simplify last used more than a year ago...
To be fair, it's not Prusa's software to begin with. Prusa probably wouldn't have made it available for free if they'd have made it themselves, but they based it on an existing free slicer, Slic3r, which is released under GPL, so they are legally obliged to keep it free. Which of course is great! 🙂
@@marcus3d PrusaSlicer is based on Slic3r. You may compare the amount of code commited by PrusaSlicer team with the amount of code of the original Slic3r. We did a LOT of work.
@@bubnikv Why would I compare that? I haven't claimed that you haven't added things to Slic3r (although I do think you could merge in some more of those nice SuperSlicer features, too). I think it's great that you use open source whenever possible, everyone benefits. The average company suffers badly from NIH syndrome, and think sharing source code is somehow bad for them ("why would we give away our hard work for free??" they ask rhetorically, without even a shadow of an independent thought in their heads). If the prusa company is smarter than the average and understand the benefits of free software then great!
The power of this software is incredible compared to simplify 3D. Just using this software I was able to make small accurate parts with a .4mm that I was only able to achieve with a .2mm nozzle in simplify 3D. The way it fills in small gaps and generates support structures is saving me print time, giving me better detail, making my parts more durable, and giving me a better finish. I can't believe something like this is free!
So much nicer than going through a change log and trying to sort it all out. Thank you for your in-depth look. Prusa has become my new go-to as I figure out more settings (and now, I know even more!). Former S3D user here, as well.
Prusa covers the major releases and discusses most of the new features. Still I agree this was a great video and I hope Angus makes more of them. I miss is software tutorials.
Thanks Angus. I've been using Prusa Slicer for years now and it's fantastic how much it's advanced in the last 18 months. I am using this RC1 version too, and I've learned a few new things about it now thanks to you.
Dude, thank you so much for this video! It saved me so much time and headache. It's too bad RU-vid doesn't register multiple likes per video from one person. Your whole CHANNEL is a lifesaver. I'm just starting out on my 3D printing journey, and very thankful for channels like yours.
This is a must watch video. I have been following PrusaSlicer on Prusa's channel, but just haven't taken the steps to move. I need to move away from S3D to Prusa Slicer. Thank you.
After watching this can confirm I can now control every setting in prusaslicer 2.4.1. Before watching this options were greyed out but now I can control every setting in prusaslicer 2.4.1
Been dragging my feet as I’ve used basic Cura for 9 years. You’ve convinced me to try it. I know eventually I have to anyway for when the XL shows up. Thank you for highlighting the slicer.
Hi programmer here(not in the same field but some general knowledge is still there), I think Prusa allowing the auto arrange feature to see gaps wouldn't be too difficult to implement, it's just it makes the process much more computationally intensive and takes time to be worked on, Because things like overhangs has to be considered aswell. And as for the multiple plate option for auto arrange, I think it would come down later down in the road, as it would also require the infrastructure to be able to handle multiple plates in the first place (for the slicer, exporting separate files, etc), which would mean it takes more time to make. Edit: Oops missed a comma.
Also programmer here with literally the same plan to comment on those two topics. The multiple plates probably requires at best a change to add such a thing (and would be great to have a hot key to swap plates... maybe the same way one would change photos in a slideshow...), but at min. it probably just requires a dirty flag and a bounds check ("if moved/rotated/etc. from auto-arrange then can't do the multiple plate export because not sure if something will fit a plate or not. Plus, need to use the bound check to identify a plate-sized group of prints. Then iterate through all identified plates) The arrangement within-pockets would require a couple things. They basically create a bounding volume to determine how much space it taken up. You can kinda see this when doing "place on face" (take a face of the bounding volume, scale relative to normal, and you get a smaller face to use as an indicator to render when doing place on face. To get the pockets, you'd now need to build it across the whole model (including internals) which is obviously expensive. But I think a bigger case is granularity. Go print a gear... should the gap between the teeth be considered wide enough to arrange for, say, a lithophane to fit in? Now you need to take some tolerance element into account... but that might be useful to be a setting. But now you aren't making a bounding volume for collision checks (something that has had a massive amount of work done over the decades for video game hit box detection and rigid body physics systems), you're now doing mesh reduction (well known but slower then bound calculation) with what essentially amounts to full mesh boundary calculation (much much slower) or if again wanting to do something faster then utilizing video game physics systems with elastic constraints (to be the min distance between models) which would then make the arrangement slightly less deterministic (which is probably not ideal). It's all doable and can honestly be PoCed in a few days... but I expect it's going to be minutes to arrange some scenes and that is not ideal. There could be newer libraries to make this easier/faster and almost certainly alternative methods to do it. But current way has 20-30 years of work done on it in near-real time scenarios, and the full-mesh and similar systems have only really been done by non-real time systems or high school/college students who forgot/didn't know to make a reduced mesh model for their hit box in a video game class. Would love the arrange in pockets, but it's unlikely to happen just due to amount of effort for the reward... most people are probably just printing a couple models on a plate at a time and don't need the pocket-fill.
Hi, not a programmer but 3d versed and late to the party. Couldn't code that packs uvs and supports UDIM export be repurposed for this? You want to check what the top down profile of the model is then treat the silhouette shadow as area bounds like a UV shell. Then you treat each build plate space like a UDIM tile?
@@CielMCBoth actually. It seemed like some of that programming could apply to this field. General UV packing on one plate or UDIM for multiple plates. I gather its similar/the same.
Prusa slicer has been my go to for a while now, Cura was fine at the start with my ender 3 but I use prusa slicer for all my different printers now. Just brilliant and so much flexibility
One other great side effect of adaptive layer height is that some flat levels at specific Z-height will be printed at their intended height instead of depending on the set layer height. For example printing some staircase like design with Z-heights of 0.25, 0.35 and 0.45 mm can normally not be printed at those heights unless using 0.05 mm layer height. With variable layer height you can set it to whatever default layer height and still expect those planes to be at the correct heights.
Angus, keep up the great work! I've been using Prusa Slicer with my Ender 3 Pro ever since I started 3d printing a couple of years ago and I love it. While I already knew about all the features you've highlighted in this video, I would really appreciate any new material you produce specific to Prusa Slicer so that I, and everybody else, can improve their game!
Nice tip. Will give Prusa another go. I had problems understanding how it worked back in the day. I mean, I will start printing again any day, … year, … decade now. Don't remind me I have "brand new" 3D printer I never finished unpacking.
Great video. I just made the switch to Prusa 2.5 from Simplify3d, finally given up hope that it will ever be upgraded. I think Prusa is better and still learning the options, thanks for making this
First off, I love your channel. I started 3d printing 6 months ago. I started with Cura since the Ender 3 S1 came with it. At first, I was very impressed with Cura. Then I found PrusaSlicer. PrusaSlicer was a game changer for me. The UI and controls on PrusaSlicer are, in my opinion superior to Cura. One thing I would like added to PrusaSlicer is the ability to tilt by angle the cutting tool. I use the cut tool all the time to cut complicated models so I have flat areas for bed adhesion. I also cut a model in order to avoid supports as much as possible. Sometimes, just printing on a different surface avoids the use of supports. Maybe the engineers at PrusaSlicer will provide a way where we can change the angle of the line cut instead of rotating the model before cutting. Your channel is just great. I really enjoy all the subjects you discuss here. Thanks so much for all the work you put in to your videos!
Also if you are doing several small objects, try out sequential printing, Print Settings - Output options - Sequential printing. Then you can finish one object before moving on to the next, which means less moving around in general.
What a coincidence, I was just asking myself these questions this morning when I wanted to print the Watch Escapement Desk Toy. Thanks for this video, it helped a lot.
I used to use Cura, which gave me a slightly better print quality, especially on seams due to the coasting setting. But frankly the usability and the ease of workflow has made me never look back on Cura again. Not to mention the speed at which they're implementing new features. One of the devs is actively working on text embossing, so stay tuned for that, maybe in the next major release!
I dunno why the hate on Cura. Cura had all of these features over a year ago, but this community acts like the program doesn't exist. I don't have a problem with PrusaSlicer, but objectively Cura had 90% of what this video is talking about - and no one is acting like it's new. In my opinion, Cura's interface is superior. PrusaSlicer looks like an app stuck in Windows 95 chic, but that's just me.
I was printing a puzzle box 2 nights ago and this video really would have been helpful then! Had to figure out how to modify areas by googling and reading, like we did in the ancient times!
Thank you for the highlights and explenations. I've been using Cura Slicer from the very beginning and never saw enough benefits to switch to Prusa Sliver or give it a go (I'm a lazy bun). But now, that you've shown me what it can do, it is really amazing. Especially Height Range Modifier is exactly what I wanted a few days ago, when I sliced some models. Again, thank you!
This is exactly what I need now! I want to print an object with a larger layer height in general for a bit faster printing and also to make it more translucent when using orange transparent material but at the top i want it to be much finer where i have put some sharp sawteeth ( It is a tool for cutting into the shell of an orange and drink directly from it). The adaptive layer height in Cura only allow me to apply it over the entire object and with no direct control but only by specifying a range to be used.
"something the software can't do and I don't think it will ever be able to do..." Cura developers: hold my beer! - one year later - Prusa developers: hold my beer! ^ Updated to reflect objective reality.
Great overview! The arranging options I find myself using ALL THE TIME! Glad to see you going over the features! You can also use Shift to drag a box around the parts you want, then do Shift-A to arrange JUST THE SELECTED PARTS. Yeah, it is pretty awesome!
Nice video. I’ve been using PrusaSlicer for a while now, particularly since they improve the supports feature. However, now I am actually using SuperSlicer, which is based on PrusaSlicer BUT with some additional features.
This is awesome helpful! I just started using PrusaSlicer and so far I am loving it with just the base settings. Now I have a lot more of a deep dive to do!
@@MakersMuse yeah the supports always seemed “not clean” and had a lot of excess prints to them compared to the super clean/exact supports in s3D. Will give it another go
@@MakersMuse Ive tried everything in prusa to get reasonable supports/ support faces and nothing seems to work for me. Its extreamly frustrating, could you do a video on that?
Two words, SNUG supports, still ain't no tree supports but definitely does a better job than the Grid option. Snug plus 75% XY separation works well for me so far. Snug still has some quirks like trying to build the support from the lowest part of the model to the area that needs support even if a part of the model is in the way instead of just building from that part that is in the way but I have had success even with supports that were only 1mm , maybe 1.5mm thick to support the tips of a miniature dragon's wings and have all of it succeed.
Having tried and really didn't like the way variable layer height works I absolutely like the layer height modifier, not only allows finer detail where you want it but can speed up your print time by having coarser layer height where you don't need fine detail. I use it when printing miniatures where you don't need fine layer height on the bases and set that to the max height the nozzle will support. The multiple plate arrangement is an interesting feature, I think I will definitely be giving that a try.
@@MakersMuse one feature you might have missed is when in paint on supports, you can select smart fill instead of brush to paint entire faces with one click. I requested that feature when they showed smart fill for multi colour printing, and within a week it was added, seriously impressive stuff from theor devs
To be fair, Prusa isn't good. If they could make it non-free they very likely would, but they based it on an existing free slicer, Slic3r, which is released under GPL, so they are legally obliged to keep it free. Which of course is great for everyone! 🙂
@@marcus3d I don't agree. The whole Prusa philosophy is "sharing". All the Prusa printers are 100% open hardware + open firmware. PrusaSlicer is open source. The community grows much faster when we share.
@@gaellafond6367 Maybe you're right that they would've open sourced the slicer regardless. However, now they didn't have a choice, because they just took an existing open source slicer and started modifying that.
Looks like I'm about to slicer hop while I distro hop. Brilliant! EDIT: When you place objects inside open spaces of other objects, can you "lock" or "group" them together and hit auto-arrange again? That would be super useful to maximize the build area!
I've dreamt of, but never really bothered figuring out to what degree these oltions were actually possible. Knowing I'll have total control over my next full bed of functional models is amazing......
Taught me some things, nice one. Have a go printing with fuzzy skin but set low - 0.08mm depth, 0.1mm length (you will want to speed up your outer perimeter and small perimeter speed to (probably) ~ 500mm/s and 140mm/s respectively to account for all the zig-zagging (and use jerk ~8) Gives a cool stipled/powder coated/manufactured look.
Any chance you're gonna take a look at SuperSlicer? Maybe after they've updated the fork to this version of PrusaSlicer? I've always found that it's way smarter when it comes to slicing certain objects, and there's some mildly experimental settings that can massively improve things on certain prints.
If you change your layer height limits in Printer Settings> Extruder 1> Layer Height Limits that sorts the issue you have with too fine layers in Variable Layer Height.
One setting I'm still missing in the modifier options is retraction and z-hop, which I would love to customize for certain areas (or at least heights). ...maybe someday, because they are constantly improving the slicer.
More on this please. There's a lot of features here, like Ironing. What the heck is that? This and the UI complexity has been one reason I've avoided the move from S3D to PS. Again I just need to dive in and start working with it.
The greatest drawback and due to which I still prefer sometimes to use Simplify3D is that Prusaslicer/Superslicer still have not implemented fan speed control by means of separate object settings, layer ratio or modifier. I vary a lot the fan cooling ratio when the model presents small section areas like for example you would do with a hand or a pointy end of an structural part. Yeah, you can modify the print speed but this is not enough a lot of times. I also like to bumb up the fan speed at the interface with the supports so they are removed much more easily. This should be very easy to implement, just call that option on the settings window!
I'm not sure if I quite understood what you are wanting to do with the fan speed, but you can insert custom gcode at a certain layer in prusaslicer. Just right click on the little plus button on the layer slider in preview mode on the plater. Put in the M106 command to change fan speed. Granted, I believe that simply changes the fan speed for that layer and subsequent layers. Maybe not the kind of fan control you're looking for.
I think you should have brought up negative volume (were walking around so might have missed him saying it) to make super tight bounds with gears by just having the model for the gear. Great show case 😀
You talk about slicing multiple plates, how about slicing for multiple printers at once? Start a new job, check what printers you want to use in a list (some printers might be busy or needing service) and it shows the beds for all the printers you selected in the interface. There is a lot of implications and i don't know if it could be done but it would be really cool. If they do that, adding multiple plates for one bed would probably be done easy as well. When autoplacing parts it should be able to guesstimate the print time per plate so you get a fairly even time distribution as well, wouldn't want one plate to take 4 hours and another 24 hours if they could take 14 hours each. The parts should be able to have a material property. If a part has a preferred material it should try to place it on a printer with that material selected, if none is available it should ask what to do. When exporting it could send it right to the correct network printers, or you have to do the old floppy disk shuffle "Insert the disk labeled Prusa Mini #3" etc.
They could do a holes algorithm but that would be b4 slicing. A simple vertical line test. But, with slicing it could conflict with expansions, internal brims, cura "make overhang printable", support brim,
It's been a few months so it's time for me to try getting my printer to work again. I went ahead and tried to update Cura yesterday and now it just won't launch on my Mac anymore. Downloaded and installed Prusa Slicer and it opened fine. By the looks of it, it looks like quite the upgrade in terms of control. Now I just need to learn it and get my printer going.
