Physical realism coverage

[ES-Alexander]

Somewhat following on from #18, why stop at physical volumes? Perhaps it's worth considering additional features that would turn the gcode tool-path into a physically realistic display.

I'm opening this issue as a general/overview thread, with the intent that in-depth discussion of any given feature can be split off into a separate issue / PR. It's possible some ideas will be out of scope for what this project is intended to do/include (e.g. if overly focused on 3D printing).

Some starting ideas

• [x] ~filament path -> extrusion volume (#18)~
• [ ] collision detection (#21)
• [ ] workspace / machine visualisation
• [ ] tool-path/extrusion animations
• [ ] timing estimates
  • needs an understanding of machine speed and acceleration limits
  • valuable for both manual and automated optimisations
• [ ] material droop simulation
  • would need modelling of material bending properties (including tensile strength when bridging), possibly across some kind of temperature curve (in which case there'd need to be some form of thermal simulation)
  • could be incredibly valuable for predicting the appearance of prints from more exotic materials (e.g. clay/ceramics, glass, chocolate, etc)
• [ ] thermal warp path correction
  • e.g. Relativity Space does this for their 3D printed rocket engines

[AndyGlx]

Few extra ideas:

• visualise retraction/unretraction with correct-volume spherical blobs. Requires retraction volume to be set in or known by FullControl - not only set on the printer LCD/firmware
• real-time print-correction algorithms, based on camera data or other data
• material vokume estimates for whole print
• volumetric flow rate data (visualise; check it's not beyond system capabilities)
• geometry correction for extrusion of metal components, created by sintering a metal-powder + polymer composite, which leads to maybe 20% size reduction
• prediction of structure/material anisotropy (hugely dependent on the tool path)
• more to come as I think of them!