simplify3d

[beerdart]

OMG
Im not one to pay for software but after two days with a difficult print failing. I bit the bullet and OMG the prints are amazing. I will give a full report after i print a few more but as of now wow.. First print all I did was input machine settings and hit print.

[jimc]

welcome to the club. i have been using it for a year and a half now. it has a quirk here and there but nothing really big and they are constantly improving. update are usually quarterly or so.

[OldSourKraut]

I too had a hard time justifying the cost of the program when Slic3r and Cura are open source. but after a couple of complex models took forever to slice or failed to slice i bit the bullet and purchased Simplyfy3d. lots of options for slicing and crazy fast at getting the job done.

[Bassna]

Yep been using since Christmas and I haven't touched another Slicer since.

[adamfilip]

I just bought it, first print looks awesome. makes the printed stuff i received from Makerfarm, look bad

[gmay3]

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.

[adamfilip]

I will do a print and do a comparison, with slic3r

[Bassna]

I will try to get some up later also. It's just so nice and easy to move around and do thing's in the S3D GUI in my opinion on top of the print's look great. My slight issue I have had is I don't think the default infill is as "strong" as it should be. Gonna look for a way to adjust the setting's to get good strength out of it

[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.

[Bassna]

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.

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 suffered because Cura can't be set to do a retraction on layer shifts, 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 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.

This guy said it much better. Just thought I would also add that it's really nice for multiple object print's. I had 7 object's I imported, clicked 1 button to align them on the bed correctly and centered, and sliced and exported within minutes before I left for work. If not for S3D this morning, I would not have been able to start my 9 hour print before I left.