Release notes for 0.9.9 (2013-03-29)

This release carries much of the hard work from the last months. However, even more features were developed recently but they’re not tested enough to get into the public release so I decided to respect the “release early, release often” golden rule. Expect more news soon, especially about support material and multiple extruders.

(Also, I’m new on Twitter :-) Follow me at @alranel)

New features:

  • raft
  • option for avoiding to cross perimeters by blending travel moves so that nozzle stays in the infill area and by completing each island at time
  • option for printing external perimeters first
  • option for printing infill before perimeters
  • option for only generating infill where it’s needed to support ceiling (saving memory and time)
  • option for enforcing support material on a given number of layers to improve adhesion of objects with poor footprint
  • option for disabling retraction on layer change
  • option for simplifying input model to given resolution to reduce memory usage and processing time
  • ability to use multiple different layer heights in the same object
  • ability to cut parts of a model
  • configurable interface layers for support material
  • base flange under support material
  • new rectilinear-grid pattern for cross-hatched support material
  • simple mode for new users
  • option for solid infill extrusion wdith
  • option for top infill extrusion width
  • option for bridge acceleration (useful for improving anchoring)
  • –no-plater and –gui-mode command line options to disable plater and choose simple/expert mode for easy integration in host software

Improvements:

  • infill every ‘n’ layers was completely rewritten to be faster, cleaner and more reliable
  • use bridging math for first solid infill layer above sparse infill
  • better extra perimeters detection
  • better bridge direction detection
  • smarter and more efficient paths
  • automatic extrusion widths default to saner behavior using low layer heights
  • multithreaded perimeter generation
  • various speed optimizations
  • show default values in tooltips
  • make sure the inwards move after last perimeter loop doesn’t exceed the object boundaries
  • don’t apply acceleration settings to travel moves
  • reduce toolchanges by giving priority to last extruder after layer change

Changes:

  • honeycomb infill is the new default one
  • .gco extension is supported too
  • nozzle is lifted by 5mm in the default start G-code
  • default value for first layer height is now 0.35mm so that the default first layer extrusion width (200%) works fine even at lower layer heights

Bugfixes:

  • crashed at launch on Windows with non-ASCII characters in user path
  • crashed at launch when config was corrupt
  • crashed when loading too small models
  • perimeter/infill overlap wasn’t taking infill extrusion width into account
  • negative extrusion generated for support material contact regions at low layer heights
  • incomplete preview in plater for some models
  • some crashes and other minor annoyances
  • only_retract_when_crossing_perimeters was not triggered in some cases
  • workaround for DBus related crashes on Ubuntu
  • a manifoldness error was triggered with multi-volume AMF files
  • the non-manifold warning was spitting out wrong coordinates
  • don’t generate extra perimeters if infill density is zero as they would be floating in air (the new infill_only_where_needed option should be the method of choice for hollow objects)
  • acceleration options didn’t work from command line
  • double lift took place at toolchange
  • OBJ files could not be loaded with drag&drop