After some months of work we've completed a new release. There have been many changes under the hood which can all be found in the release notes. Here we highlight the most important changes and new functionality for the end user.
The original nesting algoritm we used was developed in 2018 and had some shortcomings and a lot of numerical robustness problems. We've rewritten the nesting algoritm from the ground up including any low level geometric algoritms. This time we choosen numerical robustness as a priority and have done the entire algoritm in integer logic.
The challenge with irregular shape nesting (sometimes called true shape) is that each shape can be highly detailed. But in order for an algoritm to run fast it needs to have a maximum of say 20-30 edges. Our new algoritm simplifies the outline by applying just a little offset to the model to get down to 20-30 edges. This is a trade off between speed (usability) and accuracy. If you need more accuracy and speed you can also select to only use convex shapes. Addittionally the new algoritm has the following extra options:
We've added 2 commands to better be able to manipulate supports and part with each other:
With the new text command you can added text to your mesh easily. Just select 2 points between which you want to place your text and hit enter. You can select various font families, size. Engraving will perform the boolean substraction during the slice process. Embross will perform a boolean union during the slice process. In case you are working with negative moulds we have added a mirror option to mirror your text in reading direction.
For any machine getting a uniform light intensity should be a priority to increase model accuracy. Usually resins have a certain lower threshold of light exposure below which they will not solidify. By tuning the gray scale levels of your slices you are able to better control the pixel growth in all directions, with the end result of more accurate models. You can use a formula or a data table to manipulate the output.
The software supports 300+ printers. To keep supporting new printers we've improved our output of variaous types of text files. You can now add any combination of formula including loops over your slices during slicing. This allows you to export custom json, xml or gcode. Formatted in any way you need including the correct variables. Additionally you can format the numeric output to any cultural format needed. Using comma's or points as decimal seperators for example.