Quote Originally Posted by Joymaker View Post
I understand x3g for the SD card. But i don't use an SD card (yet), I use a direct connection. Can't see the virtue in handing an extra bit of hardware from one machine to the other unless I needed to take the computer somewhere else. So does your comment still apply?
Yes, still applies. The printer itself doesn't understand gcode directly over the wire or from an SD card. You can only use printer hosts that understand and send x3g protocol (ie not Cura).

At higher speeds you'll get better results from the SD card because you'll avoid pauses due to serial communication interruption (even 10ms pauses are sufficient to cause a zit on your print). You can avoid passing it back and forth by using a FlashAir and putting things on the SD card wirelessly.

That said, these days I mostly print from OctoPrint running on a Raspberry Pi connected to the printer via USB and upload gcode directly to that. But that's because I want to put as many hours on my plugin as possible for testing purposes.