simplify3d

[printbus]

If anyone has pictures, I'd love to see some printed objects side by side sliced with open source vs closed just to see the difference.

FWIW, I think that may be an unfair comparison since results are so dependent on settings. Having used Slic3r, Cura and Simplify3D, my take is that you can get to quality prints quicker with Simplify3D and Cura than with Slic3r - at least I always had to futz with Slic3r settings before I got the results I wanted. Cura and Simplify3D have just printed better from the start, and slice far, far quicker and have never hung on complex parts like Slic3r does. Again, settings can overcome the issue, but I found the amount of extrusion to be more accurate than with Slic3r and Cura. Slic3r tends to be on the low side, and Cura seems to be on the high side. And then there's the crazy number of travel moves involved in anything sliced in Slic3r.

My biggest "issue" with Cura was the way top solid layers are handled the same as infill. In other words, you don't have the option to set infill to print as fast as the printer can and also set the top solid layers to print slow for quality. Well, I guess multiple prints also suffered because Cura can't be set to do a retraction on layer shifts, an issue especially since Cura tends to always do layer shifts as the same spot in a print. I don't care for the way settings are grouped in the native Cura, but Repetier-Host repackages the Cura Engine settings in way that made sense to me.

The only gripe I have so far with Simplify3D as a slicer is that it won't readily handle single-wall items. People have found ways to futz with settings to make it work, but at least for calibration items I'd rather not do that. I do like the way all of the settings are included in the gcode files as comments - making it easy to go back and compare why some prints may have turned out better/worse than others. As a printer host, I miss the gcode text viewer/editor built into Repetier-Host, and my setting-sensitive print blower is tough to set with the simple bar slider Simplify3D provides for the print cooler control. They could at least show what numeric value the control is set to.

EDIT: For anyone interested, my current settings for all three are in this post of my build thread - RUNNING SUMMARY OF CONFIGURATION SETTINGS.