Rant: Cura did the one thing a slicer shouldn't do

Apart from blow up printers, the one scariest thing for me about a slicer is losing settings. You spend hours getting your printer dialed in, specific profiles per material and then…

You update your slicer software and it all goes away. I have now learned Cura does this. And does this a lot. Forum posts abound about it. Friends recommend I switch to Prusa because it happened to them. Unfortunately too late for me to write down my old settings, and they’re apparently not in the ~/.config/cura folder anymore. Nice.

algorithmae,

I think if you have a project saved, you can open it up and it’ll prompt you to override the current settings. From there you can save them and backup

lapis,
@lapis@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Big recommend to just jump straight to OrcaSlicer. It has Bambu Studio’s much-improved-over-PrusaSlicer UI but with features ported in from PrusaSlicer and SuperSlicer and compatibility with non-Bambu printers.

fmstrat,

Someone else I trust recommended this, too. Thank you.

xenspidey,

This is the way. It integrates so nicely with klipper as well. I’ve been a slicer switcher for a long time, but this is definitely my home for a while.

Grippler,

I switched from PS to Orca a few weeks ago, it is just a much better featured slicer. I also absolutely love that I can just click “print” and it automatically uploads and starts the print on my printer. Only had to enter the IP of my printer and that was it, extremely user friendly.

I’m not sure I agree the UI is better…it is different, and not entirely intuitive for me when looking for some settings.

B0rax,

FWIW, prusaslicer can also upload and print. The setting to enable it is a bit hidden though… (it’s in printer settings)

Grippler,

I know it should be able to, I could never get it to work though. It just didn’t want to recognise my printer and refused to connect.

wccrawford,

I tried Prusa Slicer and didn’t care for the UI. I ended up with Orca Slicer instead.

u_tamtam,
@u_tamtam@programming.dev avatar

I’ve been on the prusa slicer side of things for a long time, and you won’t see me arguing in favor of cura. That said, you should probably consider doing daily backups of your home folder, using something like Borg/restic which have great incremental and compressed backups (practically backing up TBs in seconds).

fmstrat,

Thanks, but everything is in my dotfiles repo, it’s just that cura ignores the files from the old version.

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

My nephew wants to buy a 3D printer, and I’d like to warn him. I’m worried that I’m too ignorant to do it effectively, though.

What is a slicer? What is Cura?

Thanks in advance, folks!

DreadPotato, (edited )
@DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz avatar

A slicer is the software that converts a model file into gcode, which is the commands telling the printer how to move. Cura is one of many slicers available.

Seems like you know very little about 3d printing, at least as a hobby…so why do you want to warn him?

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

Because he’s my nephew. I care about him. He’s only in high school, he’s saving up for one, and I don’t want him to be disappointed/frustrated and waste his money on a crappy printer. If I can steer him away from bad printers and software, great!

I also don’t want him to be discouraged. He’s smart, talented, and basically I want him to kick ass everything he does (I know that’s unrealistic, but hey, that’s the uncle in me talking). Plus, being good at 3D printing will be a valuable skill.

BudgieMania,

A slicer is the program that takes a 3D model and "translates it" into the sequence of actions that the printer needs to do to create that model. It is called a slicer because 3D printers build the models in horizontal layers, or in other words, in slices.

Cura is one of the slicer programs available. There are many, divided between slicers for FDM printers (the ones that print from a spool of material) and slicers for resin printers (the ones that print from the disgusting goop that comes in bottles). Your printer tends to be packaged with a suggested one but usually you can use any of the appropriate type.

Slicing is one of the most important parts of 3D printing, and it tends to be the difference between ending up with a pristine figure or a very blurry one. In the most extreme cases, good slicing will be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful print.

bluewing,

While I have always preferred PrusaSlicer, since I do own a Mk3s+, I used to use Cura also. But it just seemed to get worse with every new update/release until I just quite using it at all. Makes me sad because there were some good things things there I really liked.

Lmaydev,

Most people learn why you should back up everything the hard way I’m afraid.

fmstrat,

The problem isn’t backups. The files are there and in my dotfiles repo. The problem is Cura decided to ignore the version 0.0 folder in 5.x, which is used in 4.x, and the profiles are no longer compatible. During upgrade, it doesn’t pull those files and convert. To me, this is a major oversight for something where tweaking profiles is a huge part of the quality of the output.

Lmaydev,

Yeah that really sucks!

FigMcLargeHuge,

Totally agree. Cura has bit me more than once with losing my settings. To Lmaydev’s point, it’s hard to “back things up” when you don’t know where the settings are stored and sometimes you don’t know you need to be Sherlock Holmes until it’s too late.

the_third,

Full backup of home daily, full backup of root every week.

FigMcLargeHuge,

I work in IT and I get that, but we also should have some reasonable expectations here for how a program should handle updates. Not losing key configuration files is definitely one of those.

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah that is seriously terrible application behavior.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Never had this problem I’ll admit, working with it on Windows. But there’s also the backups plugin I’ve been running since day 1, so in case this ever happens eh, should be good.

fmstrat,

Did the backup plugin work between 4.x and 5.x? If so, perhaps I will try that during my transition, too. I have backups of the configs in my dotfiles, it’s just that Cura doesn’t import them between major versions.

Stampela,

I’ve never had issues with Cura losing my stuff (been using it with an Ender 3 since… 2019 I think) but the backup plugin is connected with your account. It’s a wonderful thing! New computer? Login, restore backup, everything is like you left it.

I do make sure to use it before any update because I have seen the same kind of posts as you have.

dumbcrumb,

Yea I remember switching to prusa slicer because of this and I also seem to get nicer prints aside from seams not being great but I alsp haven’t put much effort into trying to fix that. Never lost my settings on prusa.

fmstrat,

Yea, planning to give it a try. I just found the settings in .local/share/cura so that’s at least a good thing, but what a headache.

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