[ERROR] Trying to retrieve setting with no value given: 'mesh_rotation_matrix' when using command line

[WolfgangFahl]

Application Version 4.1.0

Platform MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Printer Geeetech A10

Action

curadir="/Applications/Ultimaker Cura.app/Contents"
curae="${curadir}/MacOS/CuraEngine"
curar="${curadir}/Resources/resources"
printer="$curar/definitions/Geeetech_A10.def.json"
"$curae" slice -l /tmp/$design.stl \
  -j "$printer" \
  -s extruder_nr=0 \
  -s machine_nozzle_size=0.4 \
  -s material_diameter=1.75 \
  -o /tmp/$design.gcode

Actual Results [ERROR] Trying to retrieve setting with no value given: 'mesh_rotation_matrix'

Expected results slicing, no error message

[rburema]

Hi @WolfgangFahl, Your definitions folder should contain the fdmprinter.def.json, which should have mesh_rotation_matrix.

[nez]

I set -s mesh_rotation_matrix="[[1,0,0], [0,1,0], [0,0,1]]" (taken from cura.log) and still I get the same message.

Also, shouldnt the identity matrix be the default value for mesh_rotation_matrix?

[WolfgangFahl]

I think this is too complicated and a showstopper for trying things out. I didn't bother to try again.

[rburema]

Hi @nez

... and still I get the same message.

Did you specify the -l option after, or before the added -s settings?

Also, shouldnt the identity matrix be the default value for mesh_rotation_matrix?

I suppose that would be useful. The command line usually doesn't get much attention though, since the 'normal' way to call it (at the moment at least, this has been the case for a long while) is through some sort of front-end, via libArcus.

As far as I understand, the command-line was originally meant for debugging (but we since have other means, for instance, the 'start the engine manually' command line option in Cura itself).

[tdeck]

i spent some time this weekend really trying to get CLI slicing to work and ran into the same issues as OP. But I had a breakthrough.

This error doesn't mean there's no value specified for the setting (contrary to its wording). It means there's no definition for the setting in a JSON file. You need to provide a def.json file for the printer and for the extruder. That's true even if you're specifying every single setting on the command line because you copy-pasted them out of the Cura logs.

I've written some quick and dirty shell scripts in this repo to make this work which you can use as inspiration (you'll likely need to change paths). Running last-cura-settings will output the last set of slice settings used to slice a model in the GUI. You can save these in a .set file and then use them in slice-with-cura to slice models.

One thing I discovered is that Cura seems to pre-transform the STL mesh in the GUI before piping it to CuraEngine. This means that mesh_position_... and mesh_rotation_matrix_... will always be the default values. Your meshes will not be centered when slicing on the CLI by default because Cura's centering happens in the GUI and doesn't get set as part of the settings, so slicing the exact same model with this CLI method and the GUI method will result in a different position on the build plate (or, as I often find, off the build plate!).

Hopefully this is helpful to other folks. I'm not sure how much further I'll take my own experiments but at least I am able to get past the errors.