Print Optimisation software - is there one?

Hey guys,

I've been printing for a while now, and I have to say, I'm disappointed by the lack of a print optimisation software. I would love to see something that can take the model you've uploaded, or loaded into it, for example, and test it for the least required support/best final quality print alignment. I know this would be something that's definitely calculation intensive, even if you go every degree in X/Y/Z that's 46.66 million calculations alone, that number effectively goes much higher if you start going down to 0.5 of a degree or 0.1 of a degree, but it would definitely be a way to optimise printing. Hell, if I was able to program, this would definitely be something I'd be aiming to produce! I print a lot of detailed objects from Eve Online, such as ships and turrets (i'm building myself a tabletop game to play lol) and the amount of prints I've had to throw out (mind you, at a 25mm scale I definitely expected to) is not even calculable! Printing 5-6 versions of the same ship, just in the off chance that it works once!

Anybody have an opinion on this? Or know of a software that would basically do something along these lines?

Questions/Comments appreciated!

You know, this is really a great idea. I'm surprised no companies have come out with something like this yet. It's only a matter of time I assume (unless someone has, and neither of us have heard of it).

Have you tried KISSLICER yet? I'm still learning how to use it effectively but it is quite versatile. Another open source developer has written a post processing program called "cubeit" that couples with KISSLICER and works well. Check out the forums here: http://kisslicer.com/forum/index.php

MeshMixer has a feature intended to orient the object so that support is minimized. I've tried it and, honestly, I can't make heads or tails out of the result. It's probably cockpit error, but I've never been able to get it to work properly, and I end up doing it by feel so the support blemishes will be out of view as much as possible. It's very likely I'm not doing something right, but I haven't felt a need to dig into it. It's worth checking out. It has a lot more uses than just print orientation. http://www.meshmixer.com/index.html