Day 10! Planning on using .3mf files for 3d printing? Well, there might be a catch...
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ย. 2021
- Day 10 Day 10 Day 10 Day 10!
It's been a long 10 days for me, but fear not, I'm going to be back within a week, I guarantee.
For Day 10 I thought I'd tell you why you SHOULD use 3mf files for 3d printing. But it seems like I actually ended thinking maybe ...maybe not.
I might have got the wrong end of the stick though. Is there something to my discovery? Am I overreacting? Find out in the comments! (this is where you come in btw)
Music
Pamgaea by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Please keep these videos up bud! it looks like your youtube journey is just starting out, but at this level of quality and with the way you understand, and really well describe a lot of the concepts in your videos, i can totally see you becoming a subscription staple for all manner of 3d printing nerds!
Really appreciate that, no plans to stop even though the sudden increase is quite terrifying, but here's to more 80k+ view videos in the future 👍
Honestly, I think Cura handles it well. They clearly ask you if you are interested in the print settings contained in the file. However I do agree this could be handled even better. In addition to filtering settings by basic/advanced/expert/custom it would be very helpful to add "overridden" - this could help you quickly see what was changed from the standard profile and spot dangerous temperatures easily. But still, I do think the import project/models dialogue is fine. It's also very handy format to save your Slicer project with its settings (and this is, by extension, useful for seeking help online).
Another thing you didn't mention is filesize. At work I use an online slicer (don't start me on that..) so I have to upload STLs. Which is usually fine, but when you get to 100+MB STL over 15-20MB 3mf it makes a bit of a difference.
Still, STLs are the main format I use, just because because Marforged cloud slicer and Formlab's Preform don't support 3mfs.
Yes I think that would fix it, just adding info to the import screen to tell you what was being overridden, or to give you a choice which type of setting to import - eg colour and supports but not temperatures, heights and speeds. As I said I have no idea how you would untangle this.
I heard that prusa are trying for dissociating printer profiles from 3mf files, so I think there's some way to go before everyone is 100% happy with the spec.
i've always wanted a way to compare settings between profile, i can never remember if i propagate a small change to all profiles let alone what. like initial layer flow rate.
If you have an IDEX printer you will discover the magic from a 3mf that is absolutley needed. A 3mf file maintains the offsets in space, this is needed so you can set different parts to an extruder and then maintain their alignment using merge or group. So yeah multi tool printers is where is 3mf shines. In fusion 360 use File->3d print and choose 3MF if you plan on doing advanced things like multi color prints.
I love your expression and the speed of your talking.
Makes it really enjoyable to watch your videos.
Thanks for your effort to let us learn something.
I greatly apprerciated the subtle witty remarks and humor in this video haha. Cheers great vid
IMO the capability to save print settings is the biggest plus for 3MF. Be honest, are you always using the exact same settings for every part or can you remember what settings you used for a part two months ago? Me neither. With 3MF i can just open the file and tadaa... there are the settings i used.
Now i think the implementation in Prusaslicer is way better, since it splits the settings into Print-, Filament- and Printer-specific profiles and will always show which are currently selected.
If i want to print a file from someone else, i just choose the profile for the printer i want to print on and still have the option to either keep the Print and Filament settings as stored in the File, compare them to another profile or choose my own.
But it will always check if the settings are within the limits you have set for your printer and will NOT let you slice if they arent (like: temp to high). Additionallybecause i control my printers over wifi i wont be able to upload gcode if i dont choose one of my printers.
TLDR; I only use 3MF and Curas safety features need improvement compared to Prusaslicer
I think gcode comments should be used for settings, and you should be able to reimport settings from a gcode file made by the same slicer.
I use different printers and different filaments, each with their own requirements, having saved presets in Cura, is much easier than having to review and modify the settings each time I want to use it.
If I had some print farm with multiple same brand machines, and use the same filament for all, then maybe there would be an advantage to 3mf. having an stl, and being able to send it to anyone, and others can use it with the settings they have already preset for their machine(s) with the slicer of their choice is much more convenient and useful IMO.
Thank you for the zip trick. I make the colorpod, a full color 3d printer add on. I never figured out how to import 3mf. Now I saw the xml file i can figure out how to make conversion software for the colorpod.
Glad I could help!
I don't know about other slicers, but Prusaslicer allows extracting the STL from a 3mf with the export command.
I save every print as an 3mf project in cura with all the settings included.
Upgrading to new cura versions 4.12 ... makes it so easy.
In a blank new installed Cura, I just open one of my with the old Cura saved prints including my favorible set of settings.
Intantly there are all my favorible settings open an ready to use or to store in the new Cura.
No need to work with any detour export/import functions in Cura.
I love 3mf.
But: Make sure to activate the 3mf file format when installing a new Cura Version.
Strangely Cura lets you save a project as 3mf and gives you an unable to open comment when trying to open that very same file.
Took me a while to figure out, that my mistake was not to activate 3mf when installing Cura.
Missed a couple that I’ll catch up on but these were all awesome videos.
There is also benefit of clearly defined units. No more scaling up or down, because STLs exported from CAD sometimes need to be scaled to 400% (Blender) or scaled down to 1%. Not to mention mm vs inches trouble. 3MF has defined units, zero (center) and size.
You should import geometry only, which is good practice anyway. Some other information like extra geometry for support blockers gets preserved (at least in Prusa Slicer), which I find pretty useful. If you unzip the file, you see there are extra folders with settings and profiles, you even show it in your video - Cura folder for Cura, Metadata folder for Prusa Slicer.
One reason that makes me approach .3MF with caution is that the format also allows for DRM (Digital Rights Management) and that opens more than one can of worms (e.g. unencrypting a DRM protected file is technically a DMCA violation so extracting and modifying a mesh could be not allowed)
If someone released the mesh with a given licence, modifying it is already not allowed. That is irrespective of any DRM being used.
Cura, for instance, doesn't even support the DRM extension of 3MF.
But isn't that the strongest part of 3mf for our application? I just started using them because it stores all my settings for that print instead of going back to some defaults. We practice safe computing hopefully, practice safe 3D printing by verifying what you're sending to your printer if you didn't create it, and sometimes even if you did! Great video thank you I'm
Sounds like I'll be sticking with .stl files. If there were more support for .amf that would be great, particularly for the curved triangles.
But I live in Saint Louis and stl seems like the only file type I should be allowed to use.
If would be great if you could do a vid explaining what all of the files do. I can't get my head round how they interact - but thanks for this
Seems like a good idea for sure, I'll write it down! Thanks for the suggestion 👍
The only reason I don't use 3MF files already is because my CAD program of choice, because I don't know enough, is Tinkercad, which does NOT support 3MF files.
Hey Autodesk, when are you going to get your act together?
I hate STL, I use 3MF and OBJ but obj is ancient too. In blender specifically which I use a lot to mock up models, you don't get proper STL sizing data for w/e reason, so the option to get all your data accurate is 3MF.
The most annoying thing about 3MF exported by Fusion360 is that Cura imports it to the "Origin" of the bed i.e. the Corner, whereas STL and OBJ get imported normally in the middle as normal when modeled on origin
Yes, I've noticed that.
Yeah the 3mf spec was supposed to 'allow' the designer to decide where to print it during the design phase, but the 3mf spec ended up demanding it while most design software isn't concerned with how it's manufactured. Sorry bout that.
@@angelorf a feature probably has uses for some people, taking out of the spec is unrealistic, adding a setting to cura and others with the same issue to import 3mf to bed center or so is probably easier, I'm no programmer, but I'm sure it's doable somehow
You deserves 100k subs
Question: Are "paint on" supports in PrusaSlicer (or SuperSlicer) transferred when importing 3MF files into Cura (or another slicer)? Do they become part of the topology, and thus move with it, or are they just "print settings"?
Sadly no, by the looks of it
github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/4242
I thought It's a ready to go, open and print file.
That's what I do after designing and selecting my print configuration. Save as 3mf, print same part exactly every time.???
One consideration to add to this, 3mf files can store vertex normals. It's not quite as much information as NURBS, but it would allow a smart enough slicer to deduce whether an edge is sharp or smooth, and what the curvature of a face is, and therefore generate arc moves accordingly.
8:36 these settings are not cool indeed
really the opposite of cool! 😬
Where can I get a copy of your Benchy duck? I love it!
unfortunately it was made up on the fly! Pun unintended.
its noteworthy to say that if auto center, auto drop, or print models individually are enabled it will break the models and potentially break your printer when it runs into a previously printed model.
been there, done that! Usually from forgetting to remove the last model, though.
Slicers also read .obj and .amf
Using the newest version of Cura, which was released after this video came out, opening a .3MF no longer asks if you want to use the settings in the file (at least not with default settings) and it simply imports the models. This was disappointing to me because I had hoped to use this to intentionally import the settings from Prusa Slicer into Cura that way.
Oh...I wonder if that was my fault 🤔
@@LostInTech3D I think it good to have it optional - Sometimes I want to include the old setting, sometimes I want to use a new profile. It is one of my pet peeves with Prusa Slicer that it will load the old filament settings instead of the current ones when opening an old project.
I agree, I felt it was a confusing message.
My objection to 3MF. Is exactly the ability to carry extensible data. But not so much errant slicer settings. Instead it’s the ability for industry giants to acquire even more control in a segment that is by in large open source. Say for example, fusion 360 allows free hobbyist use with rather strict terms. But what if Autodesk (F360) could very easily conduct an audit of files offered on popular repository’s and then use said data to target those they consider to be offenders of said terms. Would that not give them gross power. And be by in large contra the open source culture? Seems to me this gift of a more modern file format is actually a Trojan horse.
Since I lost my hard-drive, I've been rebuilding my library with only 3MF files.
One benefit of using 3MF format is better handling of solids in Fusion 360 when editing a 3MF file as compared to STL. Importing an STL file into fusion 360 is problematic for editing.
Really? I hadn't tried importing 3mf to f360...but I will now!
I only use it to save the project.
I export to 3MF since I saw this video for the first time
There still is no reason not to use STL. And as far as Fusion 360 be able to import 3mf doesn't matter I don't use it. I don't have $500 lying around for a yearly subscription. So I save all my blender files in a safe place if I need an updated STL I just generate another one. So printer settings have nothing to do with that intermediate point at least until you get it to the slicer. So I don't get it it's as though there's this file format with all these cool bills and whistles and that's neat but I don't really need them.
I do not like XML- or even text-based storing of stuff like meshes. Even though compression counters the extra size of writing every number as text rather than using a 4-byte float or an 8-byte double value with much higher accuracy and although that loss in accuracy probably doesn't matter for our usecase, having to parse a stupid text stream like this is just a waste of time and cpu power. Great idea to have a ZIP container to pack in extra meta-data, but I feel the actual triangles would have better been inside an STL-like binary file inside that zip.
I don't feel it matters much with the CPUs of today. Parsing text is faster than file ingress from storage, it has reached several hundred MB/s long ago for XML on desktop. Even on a Pi with a much slower CPU, the fundamental relationship that file read speed is dominated by storage rather than text parsing should still hold.
@@SianaGearz Yeah, that's the reason why computers still feel more slow now than my C64 did in the eighties. Sure, they have so much cpu power nowadays that wasting it on XML parsing doesn't matter. The problem is that this same argument is used in millions of other places, making stuff slowwwwwww... And sure, the ZIP layer adds way more overhead than parsing an XML, but the ZIP packaging and compression has way more benefits than the overhead it adds, whereas having all these triangles as text in an XML file with coordinates cut off at the 5th decimal spot or so, just doesn't sound like a benefit to me. You will never read through those as a human, you'll program something to do that for you and then a simple binary structure would be way easier to process than having to use a SAX parser ... Is it a big problem? No. I just don't like the "everything should be XML" mentality if it doesn't bring real benefit.
@@MisterkeTube I agree with your instinctive dislike of XML.
I fundamentally agree that in this and many other cases, design-wise, it is a relatively poor fit.
Human readability is an important goal, i read XML semi-regularly to troubleshoot software, but for that, i would prefer a format that has a two-way transform foreseen between a binary and a text representation via a schema, with binary being used by default, and XML already offers schemas (which are unfortunately not quite a good fit), except it doesn't offer a binary format. I would also find a hybrid format not entirely a terrible idea, where all the structural data is text but long chunks of uniform numbers can be stored as binary.
I also agree that cumulative damage to software quality is a thing that happens, and especially a complexity avalanche, where complexity of one part of software which is only there "just because" (inherited) creates a lot of extra complexity elsewhere in the software (induced). Case in point Cura's insanely slow UI layer for the settings pane.
But as it happens the XML parsing to retrieve numbers is fairly isolated in its performance impact and well covered up by necessary latencies specifically as it pertains to slicer and 3D printers, so that's not something i happen to find too painful in this instance.
I'm a little more concerned that the XML here is specified badly, leaving room for incompatible implementations, and various absolutely stupid quirks like complete lack of volumetric texturing and outright deranged mappings of surface texturing. This is how Microsoft formats usually turn out. Vague spec was also a major problem with Open COLLADA by SONY, which was also more ingress performance sensitive, making it a double whammy.
As to C64? I have one here, got it about 15 years ago when they were cheap. Works well, but then, it too had its stupid inefficiencies, like the disk drive interface. ZX Spectrum with Beta Disk eats its IO performance for breakfast.
How does this guy have so little views his videos are amazing?!
I know right? 👍😂
Some day we will have a slicer that can handle .STEP formats, and we can stop all of this crap with low resolution meshes. Until then, customizing functional models will always be needlessly difficult.
Do they print quicker?
I don't think so!
I tried exporting 3mf from Cura a year ago, because it's supposed to save your slicing settings, and got a broken file out of it which would crash Cura on import. I don't trust it.
I think even if I trust it...cura's profiles are such a haphazard mess I dont think I would be able to handle loading in a file with all the settings. I have four different printers (soon to be five)
Thingiverse support for 3mf is basically nonexistent. I have every intention to start using 3mf, when I tried to upload a single model design to thingiverse, it didn't work. I uploaded a multi model design, and the only way that works is all but one of the parts are 3mf and one is stl, thingiverse apparently requires that at least one file be one of the ancient formats - can be obj, stl, a few others, but a design with just 3mf and jpeg files doesn't pass it's validator. Also you'd think thangs would embrace this format, but I had uploaded the same design to thangs, and yes it accepts 3mf, their renderer for 3mf is horrid, same file in stl looks really nice in the 3d viewer, and looks like its rounded or shaded weird with 3mf. Yes we should switch from stl, but repository sites need to support this format better than they do now
none of this surprises me at all sadly.
3mf importing in blender is not great. Breaks the model in my experience