Which slicer do you use on a daily basis, and why do you choose it over the other options? If you use more than one regularly, what makes you decide to use one or the other? There have been polls on the popularity of various slicers, but polls fail to cover the “why” part. I’m looking for reasons to recommend one slicer over another for certain types of jobs, or to certain types of users.
It really depends . . . There’s a few on demo on youtube, and it seems the better one for getting details and stable prints is Cura Engine.
Cura 3.1, It works well, i know it well, it is free, and it has a nice interface. (and i have a few Ultimaker printers)
I also use Cura. I use it because a co-worker told me about it and it’s free. It has a ton of options and seems to work great. The one thing I wish it could do is allow for customizable supports. Instead of them just going straight up, I wish I could control where they go.
Sadly I don’t think any slicer can do that, but I know you can do your own if you have your own 3D modeling/CADD program
Have used Simplify3D for quite a few years now: Have tried various others just for fun: Cura, Kisslicer, Slic3r, Slic3r Prusa Edition (plus older stuff like ReplicatorG, and Makerbot print). There’s a few major problems I find with S3D (for example, it’s ‘auto support’ won’t support things like stalactites, meaning for any complicated print with ‘hangy-down bits’ you have to manually place all the supports: errorprone and time consuming). But those are outweigh by things like it’s multiple ‘process’ making it easy to chop prints up by height (Slic3r Prusa can do something similar, but I feel S3D still does it better), and how well it connects to my printers. Historically it sliced way faster than anything else I used, but now adays it seems like the competition has caught up in that regard. And as much as people bash the support on the forums, if you actually reach out to their support, they’ve always gotten back with me in a timely manner. Not a plug, but I did a in-depth comparison of S3d (3.0) and Slic3r Prusa edition here for your conisderation:
http://www.akeric.com/blog/?p=4164
The S3D 4.0 update addressed a few of the issues (like S3D finally printing single-extrusion thing walls), but other issues still remain.
Simplify3D – Because it offers some really nice tools, when I’m working with garbage models it can repair them usually, it offers custom support material addition/removal (great when I know what geometry will work just fine without the support), additionally Cura has fractured all over the place with everyone making their own “version” of Cura. Unfortunately all of them lack good OctoPrint integration. I’d kill for a web-based front end to a good slicer.
@ThantiK I haven’t tested the functionality, but I did see an option to connect to Octoprint in Cura 3.1.
@ThantiK for cure 3.X the octaprint is built in you just need to config it
I’m using cura its fast easy and not a lot of issues (i like to get custom support in it ) S3D cost to match for me (most of my printers are 200$ so pay 1/2 the price of printer look a lot for me )
I stick with UM Cura for single and dual extrusion prints, it’s free and open source (relatively hackable). S3D is expensive, I cannot afford it.
@Whosa_whatsis I’m looking for the other way around. Cura will start a print through the OctoPrint API. I want to start Cura slicing through the OctoPrint Interface. Since the revamp of Cura, you haven’t been able to use the slicing engine on the back-end.
Slic3r, I like being able to configure each bit, like fine tune perimeters, overlap, patterns, etc.
i have used most of the time slic3r and then recently switched to s3d for the easy of use and the great support feature… but i still go back to slic3r when i need to print things with concentric infill or with thin walls as s3d sucks at that… my biggest reason to stick to s3d is because the ui is so light ( memory wise ) that it runs on my crappy x200 which i use in my workshop… slic3r’s or cura’s 3d view simply crashes it
I’m mostly using Slic3r now out of necessity since upgrading my Prusa i3 MK2S to multi material. I used to use Simplify3D for all my printing but it doesn’t really work well when printing multiple filaments because of the way it generates the wipe tower, it’s built for two colors not four. I still greatly prefer it over Slic3r for features like multiple processes, custom support generation, ease of laying a surface flat, and print time estimation (seriously how can Slic3r not have this?).
I use prusa’s slic3r. Why? It’s free, it works great for the models I print (mostly mechanical), and it doesn’t annoy me. The “send to printer” button sends it off to octoprint and I’m off and printing. The only thing lacking is a “print now” button (although automagic printing is but an octoprint plugin away).
I used to use Cura, but with each new release I need to re-enter all my printers details and re-tune all my profiles because for whatever reason, Cura is incapable of migrating printer profiles, slice profiles, or material profiles, each time it installs a new version. Couple that with the disastrously broken vase mode from like version 2.4-2.5 or something, I just gave up on Cura all together. Having to constantly re-do all my profiles got real old, real fast.
I use Cura merely because the version of repetier-host I got had it installed as the first default.
@Kevin_Danger_Powers : In my R&D with Craftware, it allows you to have supports at non-vertical angles: You can kind of ‘draw’ them at angles where you want them to go. I don’t use that slicer, but it was a cool feature. Feels kind of like what MeshMixer does when generating it’s ‘tree like’ supports, but you have more control over it.
For the longest time I used slic3r because I had profiles built for all my printers and had my settings well tuned. I periodically tried other slicers, but very few of my printers are standard/still match the specifications they shipped with so changing to a newer slicer meant learning the settings and getting them tuned and I never saw the effort as worth it.
I recently bought a new printer which I wanted to run exclusively over the network, which meant using octoprint, which meant building a Cura profile. That was simple enough I repeated the process for my other printers too.
I’m not sure if I like Cura better, but it does slice faster.
@Steve_M That is an annoying thing about Cura, but I’ve found that if you let it run once and create its settings folder, then close it and replace that with a copy of the old one, that works well.
I also never tried vase mode in 2.4 or 2.5, but the tests I’ve done in 3.1 are the best vases I’ve ever printed.