__________ __ .__ .__ __
\______ \ _____/ |_|__| ____ __ __| | _____ _/ |_ __ __ ______
| _// __ \ __\ |/ ___\| | \ | \__ \\ __\ | \/ ___/
| | \ ___/| | | \ \___| | / |__/ __ \| | | | /\___ \
|____|_ /\___ >__| |__|\___ >____/|____(____ /__| |____//____ >
\/ \/ \/ \/ \/
_____ _______ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ ___ ___ ___ _ ___
| _ \ \ / /_ _| || |/ _ \| \| | | _ \ __| _ \ _ \ /_\ | _ \
| _/\ V / | | | __ | (_) | .` | | / _|| _/ / / _ \| _/
|_| |_| |_| |_||_|\___/|_|\_| |_|_\___|_| |_|_\/_/ \_\_|
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ __ __ _ _ _ ___ _ ___ ___
/ __|/ __/ _ \| \| __| | \/ | /_\ | \| |/ __| | | __| _ \
| (_ | (_| (_) | |) | _| | |\/| |/ _ \| .` | (_ | |__| _|| /
\___|\___\___/|___/|___| |_| |_/_/ \_\_|\_|\___|____|___|_|_\
This is a project that will (soon) provide fast 3d object skeining. The goal of this project is to provide a minimal set of reusable slicing tools that are very robust, fast, and repeatable.
While there are other great projects out there, including skeinforge and Slic3r, neither of them meets my need to be able to fine tune toolpaths and fill strategies, and/or are written in languages that are far enough outside of my expertise to be productive. I also spent a fair bit of time researching various methods of slicing and skeining so that I could get the most bang with the least effort. Productivity through pathological laziness!
Currently working:
- GUI interface: http://youtu.be/4cn2QE-PHxA?hd=1
- Conversion of STL to CGAL polymesh
- CGAL polymesh to layered planar perimeters
- STL parsing (thanks https://github.com/sconklin!)
- Planar perimeter inset based on tool width
- Multiple perimeters
- Full 3d LIVE PREVIEW of printable objects and layers
Coming soon:
- Cross hatched infill
- Realtime slicing
- Full multiprocessor support (via multiprocessing) for both slicing and perimeters/infills.
- Selective density perimeters
Longer term:
- Shallow dome perimeter gap filling
- Smooth transitions between layers (ramping)
- Structural ribbing on interial walls
- Optimized (voronoi/delaunay) infill on perimeter only objects
- High speed optimized exterior sacrificial support
- Corner velocity optimization via virtual G64
- Post processing existing gcode
This slicer/optimizer requires the CGAL bindings for Python, which are a bit of a PITA to install correctly. I would generally recommend downloading the complete CGAL library and building it from scratch, then using the newest CGAL-bindings master to build from. If that smacks of effort, then you can still build based on packaged versions on Ubuntu, but it's error prone and painful. I haven't done it since 12.04, but the process is shown below:
In order to do so, you need to pull the git repo in the .gitmodule (it should happen automagically), then go into the deps/cgal-bindings folder, then issue: git checkout e77c16bd5a65 #For example on Ubuntu 12.04 to get the appropriate git version. Once this is done, you can build the python bindings.
These swig bindings are used to generate fast planar slices of the 3d stl models.