Release notes for 0.9.10b (2013-06-14)

There’s so much other work ongoing, expect yet one more release soon. Especially with the new support material implementation rewritten from scratch! In the mean time, enjoy this new release and don’t hesitate to share your feedback!

New features:

• Experimental “Wipe” feature that retracts while moving back along last path (useful for Bowden extruders)
• New “spiral vase” option for extruding while raising Z continuously (works with any number of solid layers)
• Automatic version check
• New option to remember last output directory
• New command line –autosave for better integration with host software (automatically export configuration to a given file)

Improvements:

• Memory usage was reduced enormously thanks to fixed memory leaks in upstream libraries
• Many speed improvements (also thanks to J. Vincent and M. Hindness)
• Bridge overlap was reduced to improve bridging
• Rectilinear and line infill is now aligned across layers
• Brim loops are ordered in a smarter way
• Limit “Only Retract When Crossing Perimeters” to travel moves that are completely encosed in the upper layer’s slices so that we avoid visible traces on top layers
• When fill density is 0, don’t extend solid layers and ignore Solid Infill Every ‘n’ Layers
• The inwards move at the end of an external loop only takes place when we have more than one perimeter
• Generate a better error when input file is too thin and no layers could be generated
• Better compatibility with MakerBot/MakerWare and Sailfish G-code flavors (including dual extrusion)
• Order objects using a nearest neighbor search instead of relying on the order in plater
• Use G1 instead of G0 for restart after retraction to avoid problems with Mach3 blending it with previous travel move

Changes:

• The “Disable fan for first ‘n’ layers” is now applied even if cooling is disabled, just like “Fan always on”
• Concentric infill order was reversed so that smaller loops are printed at the end
• The “makerbot” G-code flavor was renamed to “makerware”

Bugfixes:

• Fixed crash with Simple mode
• Cooling time estimates were not correctly computing all objects in a plate
• Allow 0.1mm slots in models instead of merging them
• Z wasn’t always moved at travel speed
• Scaling object from the plater applied scale factor over the factor used in the previous slicing job
• Fixed regression causing skirt_height to be honored incorrectly when printing more than one object
• Superfluous extra perimeters were generated
• Fixed crash when user deleted object from plater before thumbnail was generated