Open mix579 opened 3 years ago
A maybe simpler implementation:
Instead of having Physical Printers listed in the Printer Settings dropdown, only show the User and System Presets (in that order). Slice with the appropriate preset. Then, when the user clicks on Send to Printer, show a list (dropdown?) of all Physical Printer instances of the chosen user preset, so the user can direct the gcode to the appropriate device.
Another idea is to add a preference to change the order of the printer layout so that physical printers are above the presets installed
I submitted this last year as a feature request: https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/6820
This gets even more ridiculous if you have a MMU2S installed.
I only have one actual physical printer: An i3 Mk3S with MMU2S
In PrusaSlicer I currently have 6 "Physical Printers" defined.
(yes 0.2, not 0.25, which is an additional pain point I might add, the most common small nozzles on Amazon are 0.20mm not 0.25mm)
Each of these points to the exact same OctoPi instance.
I agree with the OP that these need simplified.
I would change the order of dropdowns in the right sidebar in the following way:
Currently the song and dance I have to do to get something sliced at appropriate settings and exported automatically to OctoPi is WAY too much, and could be drastically simplified by splitting Physical Printers out.
Physical printers to User presets is clear as mud..
This idea arose from a conversation on https://forum.prusaprinters.org/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk3s-mk3-hardware-firmware-and-software-help/problems-with-prusa-slicer-usability/
Physical Printers are a great way to separate connection information for Octoprint/AstroPrint/etc from the Printer Presets shared among identical printers. However, I think there are still ways to improve it. For example, say you have four printers and you regularly swap nozzles, 0.25, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8. In the current implementation I have to create a Printer preset for each nozzle, which makes sense. However, I also have to create 4 Physical Printer profiles for each printer, one for each nozzle type, so I end up with 16 different Physical Printer profiles. It seems to be against the spirit of the original intent to require me to create all these extra presets.
I don’t claim to have the UI/UX answer. But one possibility is this:
Offer an option to define a Physical Printer. This will assign names to Octoprint/AstroPrint/etc controllers and associate them with IP addresses and passwords/API codes. It will NOT require you to select printer presets, like it does today.
Then add another pop up to the panel on the right, in addition to Print Settings, Filament, and Printer, that shows you all the Physical Printers you defined. Maybe rename Physical Printer to Network Connections to avoid confusion with Printers. In case you haven’t defined any, eg you’re printing from SD card or USB stick, the software could hide this menu.
Now in the example of 4 nozzle configs and 4 printers, you’ll end up with 4 Printer Presets under Printer, and 4 Physical Printer entries under Network Connections (not 16).
To slice, you select one Print Setting, one Filament, one Printer, and one Network Connection. Voila. No redundancy.