S3D Questions

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Lateralg
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S3D Questions

Post by Lateralg » Sat Apr 19, 2014 4:38 am

1) Has anyone crashed bed into nozzle when executing the bed leveling wizard?

2) Does anyone know how to remove or relocate the Z home command in the wizard?

3) Has anyone inadvertently overwritten a valued fff file by clicking "Save" instead of "Export"
Gary
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jsc
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by jsc » Sat Apr 19, 2014 4:47 am

Lateralg wrote:3) Has anyone inadvertently overwritten a valued fff file by clicking "Save" instead of "Export"
That's not possible, you can only ever overwrite FFF files by using the Export button. The Save button applies the process to your model, and saves the values off to be reused the next time you create a process. This can be confusing, because the values in the new process may not be the values in the FFF file or preset that is shown in the drop down. In order to revert to the values from the preset or FFF, switch to a different preset at random, then switch back to the one you want to use.

Toby
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by Toby » Sat Apr 19, 2014 5:07 am

jsc wrote:That's not possible, you can only ever overwrite FFF files by using the Export button. The Save button applies the process to your model, and saves the values off to be reused the next time you create a process. This can be confusing, because the values in the new process may not be the values in the FFF file or preset that is shown in the drop down. In order to revert to the values from the preset or FFF, switch to a different preset at random, then switch back to the one you want to use.
Here's another little gotcha. If you edit a process and hit Save (or OK in v2.1), then click "Add" to get another process, your new process is the same as the one you just saved *except* if you removed the setpoints for the cooling fan, then they are magically restored. As far as I can tell that's the only thing it changes, but it sucks to have anything silently switched like that.

This bug, or feature, is still in 2.1

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jimc
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by jimc » Sat Apr 19, 2014 5:17 am

toby, i did not verify your finding and if i understand what your saying then that would be right because i dont think you can have no setting for your fan. it has to have a setting in place even if its zero. im trying to remember this from months ago but if you delete that it will cause problems either with the gcode or marlin so it makes sense that s3d will bring that back in the next process.

Toby
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by Toby » Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:35 am

jim, interesting point. it's true if you have one fan setting even at 0 then that's what it keeps for you if you add a new process. on the other hand, most of my saved .fff files have no fan settings and that's maintained when I load them. I haven't had any problems slicing and printing that way, but from what you're saying it sounds like the software is aware of an issue so maybe it automatically adds whatever it needs to in the gcode to avoid a problem.

but then it should not let you delete every fan setting, so who knows?

Perhaps I was overzealous when I decided to stop using the bed fan and deleted any trace of fan settings. I'll start migrating my .fff files back to at least a single setting of 0.

Lateralg
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by Lateralg » Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:23 pm

fff-file.jpg
fff-file.jpg (96.9 KiB) Viewed 11778 times
jsc wrote:
Lateralg wrote:3) Has anyone inadvertently overwritten a valued fff file by clicking "Save" instead of "Export"
That's not possible, you can only ever overwrite FFF files by using the Export button. The Save button applies the process to your model, and saves the values off to be reused the next time you create a process. This can be confusing, because the values in the new process may not be the values in the FFF file or preset that is shown in the drop down. In order to revert to the values from the preset or FFF, switch to a different preset at random, then switch back to the one you want to use.
It's clear that I need to learn more about S3D. For example, I've never used a Process to save settings. I'm unclear on what the advantages are.

The image is an example of what caused me to begin this thread.
If I change anything, for example skirt offset, then click "SAVE", is my favorite fff file changed?
If instead, I click "EXPORT" then name it "Favorite with no skirt offset", what happens?
Gary
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Toby
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by Toby » Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:46 pm

Lateralg wrote: It's clear that I need to learn more about S3D. For example, I've never used a Process to save settings. I'm unclear on what the advantages are.

The image is an example of what caused me to begin this thread.
If I change anything, for example skirt offset, then click "SAVE", is my favorite fff file changed?
If instead, I click "EXPORT" then name it "Favorite with no skirt offset", what happens?
If you click Export then the file will be saved to disk, where it will not be affected by anything else you do unless you overwrite it with another Export. The advantage of that is that now you have your settings permanently saved on disk so you can reload them any time you want with "Import."

If you click "save", or just hit return and it takes you back to the main S3D window, then those settings are the ones currently in use when you slice, and S3D will load them again if you click "Add" under the process window. this is true across sessions, so that the last set of process settings will be the one loaded when you start a new process. This is supposed to be a convenience I guess, but personally I just find it confusing. Who knows what little tweak I did the last time I was testing something and then forgot about it? My practice is to totally ignore any settings that are there when I first add a process, and either load one from disk with "Import" or....

when you save the .factory file from the main "File" menu that saves everything to disk, settings and models. So you can get those settings back by reloading the factory file.

Only thing is, if you do that as a way of retrieving the settings only, then delete the model and add a new model, you'd better not save it with ctrl-s, since then it will overwrite your previous file that had a different model in it. You have to use shift-crl-s to give it a new name.

All in all very confusing. Maybe some things have been cleaned up in 2.1. I did notice it now tells you what the current .factory file name is in the title bar. Something I asked for on the S3D board a few weeks ago, so maybe they're listening, or just came up with it themselves.

jsc
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Re: S3D Questions

Post by jsc » Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:56 pm

Let me take the opportunity once again to flog my unofficial guide to S3D: http://jinschoi.github.io/simplify3d-docs/

It is somewhat dated now that 2.1 is out, but many things have not changed and the discussion on profiles and processes may be of use to you.

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