Random test (scientific-ish) between Cura, which I’ve just set up with the same settings, and Simplify3D. Left is Cura, right S3D. 80mm/s base speed with slow downs, same printer (FB2020 CoreXY), same filament, Extrudr PETG, same temperatures. I’m not saying Cura sucks balls, as I know there are a lot of people that get on with it, but I’ve either I’ve missed something in Cura or I’ve just nailed S3D well. The S3D print is by no means perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Cura.
Worth the price for non professional printing?
What is the difference? I mean, you should be able to tell just by looking at how it prints. Also, what is the actual time spent?
First off let me say I prefer S3D to Cura which was my old go-to slicer; but if I set my profile to 80 mm/s, my printer still only prints at a max of 27.5 mm/s for this model as shown in the movement speeds heatmap in the link below. If you adjust your print speeds in Cura to about 25 mm/s you should see comparable quality and print time. One of the many good things about S3D is that it automatically adjusts your print speed per layer of every print based off your default printing speed. So if you set your default speed to 80 mm/s you’ll still see speeds of 80 mm/s on large prints with a lot of surface area per layer yet small prints with low surface area on each layer (like this one) will still have good quality, all without changing your configs.
(forgot to turn off support structure for the pic but you get the gist)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3Gmh2I0ddcAaThEaTNOeXotQzQ
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3Gmh2I0ddcAaThEaTNOeXotQzQ
This may be the 1st comparison print I’ve seen that would have me look at s3d. And only because I see artefacts on the cura print that’s been bugging me on my printers for a long time.
@Michael_Scholtz What else would you want to see as a comparison? I can post some stuff if you want.
Free and Opensource vs $150 closed source, not hard to see the difference.
I switched from Slic3r and Cura to S3D (even though I only have the tiny Mini Fabrikator) mostly because I was interested why so many people recommend S3D even though it is really expensive. Print results got better and while to me the GUI still needs some work, I really like the flexibility and all the options I have. I also like the profiles for machines and filaments, even though I’d love to know what quick setting changes which options.
S3D vs Cura my favorite topic for not relevant comparison.
Cura works it is simple. The problem of Cura is that it is provide endless list of setting, little to no explanation for them and really crap interface. But lets check the reality there are plenty of great prints made with Cura. Vendors like Ultimaker and Luzbot use Cura with great success but they provide tuned profile or Cura branch for their printers.
S3D works and this is simple (I use S3D). S3d provide really great interface. It also provide dynamic speed during the print in case YOU DISABLE or ignore firmware acceleration values! It provide configurations that work for most of the supported printers.
That is all for the comparison.
According to the artifacts they both sucks. Both of the software use only G0 and G1 commands to represent the curves. Which means that your printer do not move in circular base but do straight movements interpolation to the desired circle. In the CNC world no one do this everyone use G2/G3 codes which means controlled curves.
I dig in to why no one use g2/g3 codes and I found that it because of the performance issues within the 8bit MCU that have hard time to calculate the controlled curve which lead to quality degradation. It will be really great we to see that changed with new 32 bit MCUs.
@George_Novtekov Ignoring for a moment the fact that you said the two slicers are incomparable then compared them, the slicers calculate curves pretty well. The precision of the slicer is certainly better than the X/Y precision of FDM printers so I don’t see why it matters.
Seems I’ve sparked something. This is no means the be all and end all. From a technical point, yes they are 2 different entities, this is from an end user standpoint, where when someone transfers settings from one Slicer to another, it should work, but as can be seen it doesn’t. Just as a note, I’ve run the same test in Slic3r (Dev release - see attached) and results are good, but not as good as S3D, support was a pain to remove I had issues with the first layer height settings not being clear. I am in no way saying that Cura or any other Slicer are bad, it’s what you’re used to and what works for you. S3D works for me, it may not work for everyone, but as a business user, it’s invaluable.These are my results - YMMV.
As for the paid/open source argument. I’m a Linux user, I run 99.9% open source programs, however, when a paid program, that is true cross-platform works better than a Open Source one for me, I’m buying it.
Final note - all prints had an estimated time of around 20mins, I didn’t time them as I was working on other things at the time and were printed at 200 microns.
https://plus.google.com/photos/106399722474166356077/albums/6341651799636652049/6341651802147613954
Adam, I am not saying that they are incomparable. Just don’t blame the slicer for the defect in the print caused by your printer and your skill. S3D works because it is make it easy as by default it do optimizations in the machine code for speed to ignoring the absence of fine tuning of your machine. But machine code is machine code and if you want to compare it do it excluding the errors within the printer and the print settings like speed, acceleration and jerking.
Also what you stated for slicer resolution just do not make any sense. It is not matter of an resolution but how you generate the machine code. Every circle need to be segmented to straight lines. Every line will be separate command to the printer so if you segment it to a single stepper move you will flood your controller by far. So what I manage to find over the forums is that circles are segmented up to few hundred segments depending on the dimensions. In most cases between 200-300 segments for something between 30-50 mm in diameter. Consider that this segments could be generated differently along the different layers for example in a cone you will be able in a perfect print to see the artifacts. For example human eye is capable to detect surface variation like scratches way bellow 0.1mm.
Hi…my thoughts about circle segmentation. This is not a slicer problem but limitation which comes with STL file format. Surface in STL is “made of” triangles/lines not arcs. And btw…G2/G3 commands are supported in GRBL which is I think base code for most of 3Dp firmwares and runs even on smallest 8bit arduino.
@George_Novtekov In that case I would agree with your first point. But I still think that splitting curves into line segments isn’t that bad. I mean of course it isn’t preferable but I really don’t think the difference would be noticeable if you export the .stl at high enough quality. What I was trying to say was that the string of line segment’s maximum deviation from the curve would still be smaller than the precision of the printer. So if the margin of error due to using line segments instead of a curve is less than the margin of error of the printer itself, why worry about it?
Similar results here but with a different view. https://plus.google.com/+UglymonkeyZa/posts/8jh5aGarkcx
@Ax_Smith-Laffin look at this before you purchase.
@Hendrik_Uglymonkey_3 Already have S3D, it’s my go to Slicer…
@Ax_Smith-Laffin OK no problem. I have S3D as well but my go to slicer is KISSlicer because the support on that is amazing. So complicated prints that need a lot of support work super on KISSlicer. Thanks for the reply. Happy printing. 
@Hendrik_Uglymonkey_3 You use KISSlicer pro or the free version?