arcedit

A fast 3D Gcode Viewer/Editor for visualization of multi-material, weighted mixing, fused filament fabrication.

Overview

This was created to speed up adding the codes needed for controlling active mixing filament printers, mainly… mine. Support for multi-material 3D printing is still young, and currently support for mixed/full color filament printing is basically non-existant. This method gets around that for the time being as we’ll never have weighted material support in a slicer until we are using it in 3d printers.

Adapted from the very hackable: https://github.com/jonathanwin/yagv

Features:

• Fast, easy to use, 3D interface
• Parsing and display of weighted material mixing M163 codes
• Layer by layer/line by line stepping and playback of gcode.
• Syncs the currently rendered gcode to an interactive gvim window for editing.
• Supports Machinekit velocity extrusion. There is no E.

Requires:

• python 2.x (2.7.3 tested) http://python.org/
• pyglet 1.1+ (1.1.4 tested) http://www.pyglet.org
• vimrunner 1.0.3 sudo pip install vimrunner
• gvim 7.4 with +clientserver enabled at compile time vim –version to check compile time options

Usage:

• Edit config.cfg and setup your filament color RGB values for display.
• Generate gcode using the velocity extrusion patched version of Slic3r for Machinekit. Add at least one ‘filament weight’ code to the start of your gcode during slicing. Example: ‘M163 S1 P100 ; filament 1 at 100% weight’
• Execute: arcedit [file.gcode]
• Use arcedit to locate a suitable point to alter the filament mix ratio.
  • Press Up/Down or middle mouse + drage to switch layers.
  • Press N and P go to next/previous rapid location (usually to a new area)
  • Use Left/Right to go forward/backward in time for extrusion. Hold Control to go faster.
  • Where you want to start a new color, press C to insert a new blank color code and edit it. ( or pre-define color codes in config.cfg -> shortcuts )
• Press R to save and reload. The resulting material/color changes are displayed in the interface. If possible, the current location is maintained. Repeat the last 2 steps for each area you want to change, per layer.

Issues:

• It’s still a manual process.
• You have to reload the file after every change to see it. There is a better way…
• Panning not yet implemented.
• I designed this using Slic3r output. Other slicing programs may not work.
• Sometimes I get ‘Bus errors’. This is what happens when I loose sync with the gvim process. Restarting arcedit works, and you don’t loose anything.
• Processor usage is higher than it needs to be.
• Many gcodes unsupported, in particular:
  • G20: Set Units to Inches (usage unknown)
  • Arcs (G2 & G3 ?)