Ultimaker announced a major upgrade to their 3D printing software, Cura.
While used primarily by Ultimaker customers, the open source Cura can be used for other machines as well. It provides an ability to prepare 3D model files for printing by slicing the model into GCODE.
The new release has been “completely reengineered” using the Uranium software development framework. This enables the product to take on the ability to accept plug-ins to easily extend the functionality of the product.
Key improvements include:
A simplified and, they say, “more pleasing” user interface. That is always a good idea, especially when selling increasing amounts of product to general consumers.
A “Time vs. Quality” slider control permits you to easily select speed versus layer size. This classic 3D printing tradeoff is now entirely visible.
Additional settings have become visible in the advanced mode, enabling deeper experimentation by adventurous users.
They’ve now included an Undo / Redo feature. Why was this missing for so long?
For those with 4K screens, rejoice, as the new Cura now supports higher resolution screens.
The support structure generation algorithm has been “greatly improved”, meaning the “positioning and degradability of support” are better. We take this to mean that support structures are more efficient and attach in more convenient places.
They’ve also added an experimental feature called “Wire Printing”, in which a solid model is printed instead as a wireframe model. This could produce some very interesting work.
The company suggests they new software architecture will permit the rapid addition of even more new features, including “All At Once / One At A Time Printing”, dual extrusion, support for DAE and AMF 3D files and much more.
If you’re an Ultimaker user or anyone who has Cura installed, you might want to do a quick upgrade.
Via Ultimaker
