UltiMaker Cura 5.5.0-beta.1

New features and improvements

Engine Plugins Introduced infrastructure for Engine Plugins; Plugin developers can now hook into and change the actual slice process using a programming language in which they feel comfortable: C++, Python, C#/.NET, Dart, Go, Java, Kotlin, Node, Objective-C, PHP, Ruby In this initial version, plugins can hook into the following engine slots:

• Modify generated gcode, postprocessing it per layer
• Generate Infill patterns
• Modify extrusion paths
• Listen to a broadcast of all Settings

Cura plugins can now easily add new Settings and extend existing dropdown Settings. Users are now warned if a previously saved project file depends on a plugin and that plugin isn't installed in the Cura instance that tries to load it.

To showcase this new infrastructure we introduced a Gradual Flow Engine plugin; This plugin prevents sudden drastic changes in flow transitions. You can find it under your bundled plugins and the new gradual flow settings can be found in the material category when all settings are visible Do you want to participate in the discussion about the potential and possibilities? You can join the discussion on GitHub here. ↗

Introduced the following new settings Gradual Flow Enabled, Gradual Flow Max Acceleration, Initial Layer Max Flow Acceleration, Gradual Flow discretization step size, are to finetune the Gradual Flow plug-in.

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Top Surface Outer Wall Flow, Top Surface Inner Wall Flow, Top Surface Outer Wall Speed, Top Surface Inner Wall Speed, Top Surface Outer Wall Acceleration, Top Surface Inner Wall Acceleration, Top Surface Outer Wall Jerk, and Top Surface Inner Wall Jerk settings can be used to tune the top surface of your models.

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Small Top/Bottom Width reduces jerky motions in small top/bottom surfaces, with Small Top/Bottom On Surface you can exclude the setting on the surface

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Group Outer Walls will bundle types of walls in the same layer reducing travels, thanks to the contribution by @Arcari55

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Enable Fluid Motion, Fluid Motion Shift Distance, Fluid Motions Small Distance, and Fluid Motion Angle are settings for printers with smooth motion planners like Klipper. It's hard to show the changes in preview, but we encourage you to check it out.

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Updates in the available supported OSses

• Introduced Max OSX builds for ARM64 (M1 support), next to our existing X64 builds. With major contributions from @TheSin
• Introduced a single Linux build removing the need to have a different modern and regular Linux build.

Setting improvements for Ultimaker Printers

• UltiMaker printers with UltiMaker Materials have faster-predicted printing times as a result of a number of changed printing speeds
• UltiMaker configurations with limited intents in the past like AA 0.8 cores, now have more intents available
• Updated printing temperatures for UltiMaker printers to be more uniform
• Updated Support Interface Settings for UltiMaker printers
• Introduced a support material tag, so support is automatically printed with support material
• Default has been updated to Balanced to reflect the perfect harmony between these visual, engineering, and draft profiles.

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Quality of Life Improvements

• Use Tab to navigate between settings in the Per Model Settings window, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/10967 ↗
• Introduced Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V next to the current multiply behavior, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/8859 ↗
• Arrange your models in a grid with the same orientation with Grid Placement
• A message that shows when your Removable Disk is out of space and prevents incomplete gcodes from being saved, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/14273 ↗
• Add Printer and Printer Settings windows are now resizable to fit in more start/end gcode in an orderly way
• Restored the color picker tool when creating custom materials, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/11899 ↗
• You can now scroll through long messages, and can easily close them if you finished reading, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/12325 ↗
• Searching for materials and plugins in the Cura Marketplace has been improved
• "This Setting Is Hidden Because" icons were missing in the settings visibility for Windows and Mac
• Only one file could be loaded and you could not load multiple files if they were mixed STLs and Project Files, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/15879 ↗
• It seemed like models could be multiplied more than 99 times, there is now a limit, solves github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/14105 ↗
• It's now more clear if Cura is syncing materials over the cloud
• It's not possible anymore to send a printjob to a turned off cloud connected UltiMaker printer

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More Features

• You can now sponsor the Cura team from the Application Switcher, and Help menu
• Infill behavior close to the skin to prevent jerky motions and visible overextrusion
• The About Dialog includes more build information for Cura developers
• Introduced more hardware info like system, release, version, processor, and CPU cores to the logging to improve troubleshooting.
• Updated supporting certify libraries
• Introduced a new Post Processing Script; Limit XY Accel for bed-slinger printers, contributed by @GregValiant
• Introduced the machine name in the gcode headers, contributed by @smartin015
• Extruder settings are cached to speed up slicing, contributed by @sesse