EDIT: Vector slicing is the way of the future for craftware.

3D Printing
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EDIT: Vector slicing is the way of the future for craftware. They’ve got it even faster than raster slicing due to building this program from the ground up. This program has a promising future. :slight_smile:

While it’s still very much in beta, craftware is doing some very interesting things with slicing. Firstly they had a ‘new’(can’t verify this) method of slicing called raster slicing. There were heaps of parameters you could tweak but it still seemed to have a couple of small issues so they re-introduced vector slicing which is apparently the standard slicing method. They’re going to continue working on raster slicing in the future as it cuts slicing times by a siginificant margin.

CraftWare Raster vs Vector Slicer: http://youtu.be/j_ISiJOg9nE

While it isn’t open source (they said it should be in the future) they are using community advice to build it. It excites me when you can ask for a feature and see it implemented a few weeks later.

If you want to give feedback and input into the program hit up http://www.craftunique.com/forums to get involved :slight_smile:

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So many ugly artifacts! I’d rather wait a bit longer for the slicer to finish than having to print that.

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Tom,
Surprisingly the 2 skull test scene was sliced faster with our highly optimized vector slicer than our “old” raster slicer. We don’t use 3rd party libraries in our software and the code is highly optimized. We won’t continue the raster based method, but still most parameters can be used with the vector based one.

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What’s the point of not using 3rd party libraries? Many of them including the popular http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php have very permissive licensing.

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@Billy

We can better optimize our own code and speed is a key point for us.

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@Craftunique1 ​ I didn’t realise you guys were on G+. There’s a community/knowledge base here just waiting to be tapped into if you’re trying out something new. At the end of the day it’ll be people like the ones it this community buying/selling your products. Sorry bout blurring some facts. I’m very excited for the future!

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I just downloaded CraftWare today. I’m excited to see how it does! :slight_smile:

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I liked the graphics display but it gave my part warts. and print time vs cura’s print time was horrible, and it was a simple part.

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@david_merten ​ was this with the most recent version?

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I never looked at any slicer software code, but I wouldn’t have expected anyone to use raster methods to slice for FFF because of how the machine operates. Converting a vector object to raster slices to a vector path sounds like an exercise in pain.

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I was playing with the 1.06 version. So it’s not the latest version now. I believe it was the time delay between layers that caused the problems. I entered 0 seconds for minimum layer time but it would still pause after each layer and ooze extra material every time it paused. My round cylinder had warts all over it even on the hole through the center.