Has anyone tried MatterControl? I’m frustrated with Slic3r not taking full advantage of the computer’s processing power.
http://www.mattercontrol.com/
No Linux? I wonder if it will run under Wine? Still…
I didn’t even know it existed. Interesting…
Closed source, no linux. No thanks.
Hm, i will try this…
Hmmm. The Slicing settings look a LOT like Slic3r. http://www.mattercontrol.com/articles/mattercontrol-slice-settings-explained
I’m curious specifically what you were referring to when you say Slic3r doesn’t take advantage of your computer?
The more I look at this, the more I suspect this thing uses the Slic3r engine so I imagine it will be a slow as Slic3r.
Mattercontrol is just a frontend for Slic3r (and possibly the CuraEngine. Not sure if they still package it with that, I complained that they didn’t follow the license)
The version I have comes packaged with slic3r and curaengine. I’ve played with it a little, and so far I’m not terribly impressed, though the idea of including default profiles for various machines probably makes things easier for beginners (though it can be annoying to experienced users who are used to have more direct control over things).
Fyi, it’s open source now, as of Jan 31 They have some interesting plugins for creating stl files that I really like
Well, I had a 2.5mb stl file that Slic3r couldn’t slice in 2 hours. (A lithophane from Thingiverse) I watched my computer’s processors and it wasn’t even using a third of the processing power even after I made it a priority (no other large software was operating either). Why can’t it subdivide and process and kick it out to the GPU to boot?
Did you click on advanced settings and then in print settings/advanced set cores to your cpu+1 ?
@J_O11 It is set to 2 threads (0.9.10b)
I definitely had one file that Slic3r just didn’t like (large brain scan) and wouldn’t slice after 8+hours. I switched to the thinwall-bpv branch of the code and it was done in minutes and I think some of that performance has come into the more recent versions (note that 1.0.0RC2 is out).
Definitely try turning off the options under “quality settings” in the layers and perimeters section, especially “avoid crossing perimeters” as those really do slow it down a lot and some operate on global data (I think) and therefore only run on one thread.
If you haven’t already, you should really try Cura or Kisslicer if you want faster slicing, they are both so, so much faster than Slic3r.
I recently did some tests to compare Cura 14.01 with Slic3r 0.9.10b, Cura is usually 7x to 12x faster.
And that’s with Cura running on a single core (as it’s not multi-threaded yet)
I’m using it on a Printrbot jr v2 for some time now. The “auto” bed leveling saves me alot of time and frustration.
@Daid_Braam , I can’t use Cura myself because while the “auto-slicing constantly” is nice for higher power machines, my 1.7ghz ATOM single core just can’t handle it - I print on my old EEEPc. I mean sure, it can slice, but it simply takes up my whole CPU and freezes the program for 10+ seconds at a time constantly. KISSlicer on the other hand, has absolutely no problems whatsoever, and I’ve been able to slice 200mb+ models without fail.
You may want to look into kisslicer