Questions/suggestions as someone new and evaluating a purchase

#1

I’m evaluating your software and like that you are a buy once and get updates option, that’s a draw for me vs. other subscription options. I’ve been evaluating other slicer software and there are some things in them that I wish were easier/possible in Formware to make my decision easier. I may not be entirely understanding everything yet as I’m only in this for less than a day sooo…:

  1. Support Workfow streamlining - As with most people I think we’re all doing a lot of support work. The ability to easily insert and place supports is crucial. It would be nice to be able to easily place a support tip [here] and then drag to another location and anchor it. This is handy for doing things like parenting/fans where you have say a medium tip main support and a few offshoot light supports that tie into the main trunk going to the plate.

  2. Somewhat related to the above, it would be nice to have dual ball-joint mounted tips to get into tighter places more easily, and related to this, have suggested orientation/snapping that tries to orient the cone as close to 90 degrees to the attachment point as possible to minimize damage to the model, and related to THAT better model collision detection and avoidance automation (both in auto-supports and manual). Seeing a support shoot right thru my model was a bit unnerving… :slight_smile:

The above are my blockers right now for hitting the [BUY] button but again I am still fresh in this and may not have the proper workflow down vs. the other slicer.

  1. Very minor: Save raft setting for labeling/not labeling the raft

Thanks for making this slicer, I am NOT a fan of Chitubox and their locking down of the ecosystem and will NOT give them more money and I hope that printer mfg move to more OpenSource platforms. Coming from the FDM printer world (Only had resin for a few weeks!) it is a bit of a jarring experience.

#2

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your considerations and feedback.
I’ll reply to your topics.

  1. Yes agree to that. Our support UI needs some tuning and some updates. We’ve been working on some other algoritms last months and are coming with a new (alternative) UI next to the windows basic one. That took some time.

  2. What do you mean by ball-joint ounted tips? You can increase the individual sphere of the tip compared to the last beam. This usually makes the support snap outside of the parts volume; leaving only a small residue on the part. The Tip should snap to your model. When you select the tip, an orange square appears with which you can drag the tip for small amounts and it will snap back.

  3. For the collision detection; i’m not happy with ith either. It was programmed 2-3 years ago and i’ve already made a sharper better version. It’s under the other icon with the small red lines. (screenshot below).
    I will migrate the 2 together. The same holds for the auto support algoritm; at this point it’s not optimally using the exact calculation.

kind regards
Elco

image

#3

Regarding joints, something like this:

image

As you can see this seems to have more adjustment vs. Formware:

image

It does look like I can force something similar but it’s pretty burdensome and really impacts workflow:

image
image.jpg493x582 51.1 KB

…done by making a connecting bar from somewhere into the post and then deleting all but the new ball joint…

#4

aaah I completely missed the word ‘dual’.
Sorry about that.
I see what you mean; an extra joint.

You could for manual support also use the treesupport; i think it has 1 extra joint. But you will have 2 tips at least.

I’ll put it on the feature list. thx.

Elco