PrusaSlicer 2.4.0-beta2

Summary

This is the second beta release of PrusaSlicer 2.4.0, following 2.4.0-alpha1, 2.4.0-alpha2, 2.4.0-alpha3 and 2.4.0-beta1. This beta mostly fixes bugs found in beta1.

To let you enjoy the beta without worries, the beta builds save their profiles into PrusaSlicer-beta directory, so you may use the beta side by side with the current release without ruining your production configuration.

Windows dark mode improvements

As mentioned in beta1 change log, we continued in Windows dark mode implementation. This was a tedious work given the lack of support provided by Windows API, but we managed to skin most widgets and got reasonably nice look on both Windows 10 and 11 in the end. Main improvements with respect to 2.4.0-beta1 are included in https://github.com/prusa3d/wxWidgets/commit/4b7588eb0fec2d3e9b48e8b1d27e347ba91011a8:

• Skinned title bar for most dialogs and frames
• Redrawn Spin controls
• Skinned tooltips, scroll bars, menus, and list boxes

We also improved dark mode version of "Change volume type" dialog and PrintHost dialogs.

Other improvements with respect to PrusaSlicer 2.4.0-beta1

• When copying system info from About->System Info dialog into clipboard, OpenGL extensions are newly enclosed in <details> tag so they are wrapped when inserted into a github issue #6830

• Conversion from inches/meters to mm can now be done for all loaded objects at once, so the user does not have to confirm each object separately.

• New functions in custom G-Code macro language: round(value) (rounds to integer), digits(value, num_digits, num_decimals) (rounds to num_digits and num_decimals, left filled with spaces), zdigits(value, num_digits, num_decimals) (same as digits(...), only left filled with zeros) #3472

• New placeholder parser values for output file name template: {num_objects} (number of printable objects on the plater), {num_instances} (number of all printable instances on the plater) #2735 #3339 #4607

• When selecting SLA support points by the selection rectangle, even points that are slightly obscured by the object are selected. Until now, the center of the visualized sphere had to be visible, and it sometimes hid behind even very tiny bumps on the object.

• When running 32-bit build of PrusaSlicer on 64-bit operating system, the user is instructed to download the correct version. While such application will run, it will be slower and will easily exhaust memory.

• Fixed a crash when uploading G-Code to a print host for the second time #7170

• When PrusaSlicer detects there is a more recent configuration folder than the one it is about to use (such as an alpha/beta specific folder), the user is asked if he/she wants to copy that configuration into the current folder. A configuration snapshot is taken in case there is something that would be overwritten.

• Added a "Start printing after upload" checkbox for Repetier server (#5351, thanks @scott0122)

• Sliders presented in the in-scene dialogs always allowed to type in the required value after Ctrl+mouse click. Because this useful feature was too hidden, we now show a small button to the right of each slider to switch it into this mode:

• SLA material color can now be specified in Material Settings. The color is used for visualization in the scene and is also shown in the right panel combo box. Until now, the last FDM filament color was used.

• Windows specific: When PrusaSlicer was downloaded from the Drivers bundle and installed using the installer, the created desktop shortcut launched external updater application instead of PrusaSlicer. The updater checked updates online, notified the user when a newer version was found and then started PrusaSlicer. The drawback was that command-line arguments were not correctly passed. This was now improved by switching the order: PrusaSlicer now runs the updater after it starts. This only happens when 'Check for application updates' is checked in Preferences and the built-in notification about the same thing is supressed in that case.

• In-scene dialog widgets now accept Numpad Enter (until now, only Enter was accepted)

• Shape Gallery dialog can now be closed by pressing Esc

• Linux specific: Extruder colors in the right panel can be changed by clicking the cog wheel to the right of the respective filament preset #6759

• When uploading G-Code to print host, the confirmation dialog now has an "Upload and Print" button (instead of a checkbox)

• Changing purge volumes in multi material project did not mark project as unsaved #7265

• Minimum diameter of the brush in the multi-material painting gizmo was reduced to 0.1 mm #7108

• Configuration Wizard: when adding a printer profile with no default filament/material profile, the dialog is shown informing the user that one should be selected manually

• When custom extrusion visibility is supressed in Preview, they are not taken into account when 'Volumetric Flow' view is shown. The scaling of the color palette is therefore more appropriate #7066

• Context menu in the right panel now shows even when right clicking the name of the respective part, not just the 'Editing' column #7270

• SLA material expansion correction can now be set independently for all three axes

• Increased translation speed maximum in 3D connexion dialog to 30 (#3385)

• 'Scale to print volume' now works with circular beds

• When color changes are added using the vertical slider in Preview, the colors are newly chosen randomly. Until now, a fixed predefined sequence of colors was used, leading to issues when the color changes were not added in order).

• Out-of-bed detection was refactored and is now faster

• Support generator now merges bottom contacts, top contacts and interface layers where possible (always possible with soluble supports, with non-soluble supports it is only possible when they are extruded without bridging and have the same layer height). This removes thin loops of interfaces that were sometimes generated with complex geometries and should generally result it nicer support interfaces.

• Added experimental filtering of propagated support columns to two extrusions, overlapping by maximum 20%. This filtering step will remove spurious columns that do not support anything, but it may also remove supports supporting tiny islands (which would likely not be printable anyway without user intervention, such as extending the supported area by painting).

Bugs fixed

• Mirrored objects appeared darker in multi-material painting mode (except on macOS Monterey, where non-mirrored objects were darker). The issue is now solved on all platforms and operating system versions #7259
• Multi-material painting did not correctly propagate top and bottom solid layers on mirrored objects
• Fixed a crash in bed collision detection when there were sinking toolpaths
• Fixed calculation of estimated times for individual layers for multi-material models #7110
• Variable layer height editing did not not work when printing on raft (broken between 2.3.3 and 2.4.0-alpha1) #6999
• Fixed an ugly artifact sometimes appearing in Configuration Wizard (incorrectly shifted printer images)
• When supports are enabled and 'detect bridging perimeters' is disabled, a suggestion appears to turn it on. This suggestion newly only appears when the user makes the change, not when such config is loaded #6814
• Bottom layer of a multi-material painted model had incorrect color when the object was partially below the bed. This is now fixed #7107
• 'G-code thumbnails' config option now accepts an empty string to turn thumbnails off #7019
• Fix of a crash when layer count exceeded 4095 in slicing code and MMU segmentation, likely specific to fine layered SLA prints #7168
• Fixed a crash when a part of a multipart object is completely below the printbed
• Fixed a possible problem in SLA mode: supports inside cavities might have ended up not attached to the model
• When selecting an object while moving the mouse, only one part was sometimes selected #7160
• Fixed missing sinking property in objects list for multipart objects with some parts completely below the printbed
• Fixed incorrect handling of exactly horizontal surfaces that were painted (by supports/seam/multi-material). The painting was sometimes ignored.
• Fixed int() function in the macro language: it did not accept an expression unless it was enclosed in double parentheses. Constants and variables were processed correctly #3472
• Fixed localization encoding issues in Undo/Redo stack (introduced in 2.4.0-alpha3)
• Clipping plane in gizmos was not shown correctly when viewed exactly from Left or Right #7211
• Reworked an internet connection check before the new 'Send system info' is shown. The check sometimes did not work and the application was unresponsive before it timed out. It is now done differently (hopefully more reliably) and only on Windows. Linux and macOS open the dialog even without internet connection.
• Fixed high CPU usage and nonresponsive application during parameter changes for objects with a large number of modifiers #7220
• Brims were sometimes not generated in 2.4.0-beta1 (all objects missed inner brims, objects inside holes of other objects missed the outer brims too) #7213
• Empty G1 commands were sometimes present in the G-Code due to the cooling slow down logic. This is an old bug present in 2.1.0 already #3058 #5176
• Default color sometimes appeared at the boundary of two multi-material painted areas #7112
• Fixed a crash after a filament or SLA material was installed with a Configuration Wizard and then erroneously activated even though it was not compatible with the active printer profile #7169.
• SL1 files produced by very old PrusaSlicer versions did not contain the used profile. When loading such a file, layer height to use is loaded from config.ini instead (it should always be part of the SL1 archive).
• The settings in 'Import SLA archive' dialog now retain the selected value, so the users don't have to reselect them every time they open the dialog
• Mesh errors after SLA import are now repaired (as they were in 2.3.3, but not in 2.4.0-beta1). This is a consequence of recent refactoring related to admesh library.
• Fixed dimples in external perimeter after slicing multi-material painted model #7235
• Fixed crash in the multi-material segmentation when some projected triangle is outside the bounding box of the current layer #7299
• Fixed bulges of base color on multi-material painted models #7109
• Fixed a beta1 crash after typing zero into scale or size fields in the right panel #7245
• Fixed cut function that sometimes worked incorrectly when applied on multi-part object #7258
• Fixed error when resizing object to bed limit (may be exactly equal to the build volume height) #7246
• Fixed a crash after splitting object into parts #7282
• Fixed a crash when simplifying a mesh and manipulating Undo/Redo after it
• Simplification preview does not mark project as modified, invalidate slicing, insert Undo step nor remove painted areas
• A warning about empty layers is newly emitted once per object, even when there are multiple empty layers detected
• Fixed 'Volume' in the Info box in the right panel. It showed incorrect values when the selected volume was scaled and non-sense value when multi-instances object was selected. The Info box is now shown only when a single volume is selected.
• Fixed a crash during slicing in SLA mode (localization dependent, present e.g in German) #7313
• Fixed infinite loop of dialogs suggesting to enable wipe tower layer synchronization in some cases #6124
• Empty layer warning sometimes reported false positives (broken after support top/bottom distance was separated) #6709
• Simplify dialog no longer obscures the main toolbar when opened after undo/redo
• When attempting to simplify a multipart object, user is newly informed that it is not supported (beta1 did not do anything)
• SLA hollowing preview sometimes did not show correctly when it was toggled on and off again
• Fixed a crash when entering negative values in sliders in variable layer height dialog (the range can be overriden with Ctrl+click)
• Horizontal slider in Preview sometimes (after a specific sequence of actions) incorrectly iterated over two layers, not one as it should
• Spiral vase mode was not applied when 'complete individual objects' was also active
• Windows specific: OctoPrint did not work when using hostname instead of an IP address. This should now be fixed.
• Linux, macOS: When exporting GCode, characters that are invalid on Windows are not allowed in the filename. They led to crashes when exporting to FAT/NTFS formatted drives.
• Support generator: "with sheath" option now again uses the lighweight zig-zag algorithm for the sparse support columns, while PrusaSlicer 2.4.0-alpha1 to PrusaSlicer 2.4.0-beta1 used the new "stable" zig-zag algorithm for both the non-sheathed and sheathed sparse support columns creating unnecessarily thick support column perimeters.
• Fixed endless loop of "Do you want to save the project?" possibility in a specific scenario

Translations, profiles

• Updated CZ translation
• Fixed a mistake in Korean translation (#7164, thanks @tangible-idea)
• Fixed several typos in UI texts (such as #7161)
• Added Ultimaker 2 printer profile (thanks @foreachthing)
• Added several Voron printer profiles (based on the profiles from https://github.com/slic3r/slic3r-profiles, thanks to the original authors)
• Updated BASF filament profiles