Short overview of how good the nesting capabilities of various 3D slicer are.
The task is simple: placing as many of these shapes on a 200x300mm printed as possible. Manual (quick and dirty for reference): 6 pcs.
Ranking:
- Ultimaker Cura: 7 pcs.
- human (me): 6 pcs.
- Orca slicer: 5 pcs.
- PrusaSlicer & BCN3D stratos: 4 pcs. By switching (for this particular part) from the worst (Prusa) to the best (Cura) slicer the nesting performance improved by a whopping 75%!
Ultimaker Cura:
Prusa:
BCN3D Stratos (forked from an old version of Cura):
OrcaSlicer:
https://help.prusa3d.com/article/sequential-printing_124589 <-- explains how to set up the sequential printing in Prusa.
https://www.klipper3d.org/Exclude_Object.html <-- Explains the exclude object function in Klipper/Mainsail
https://docs.mainsail.xyz/overview/slicer/prusaslicer#enable-exclude-object <-- how to configure Prusa to label objects so mainsail/klipper can individually select and skip them.
Like I mentioned, I have the most experience with Prusa + my Ender3 ( w/ a RPi3/Kilpper & mainsail; and a crtouch sensor) . I’d wager that other slicers could do this too, but I"m not sure of their setup.
Thank you so much for this! I installed Klipper a month or two ago and haven’t had the opportunity to dig into all of the cool stuff you can do.