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What would you say... is S3D worth the money?
It is really sad that there is no trial version

Define "worth it". If giving a company your money and giving them carte blanche to revoke your license for anything they choose and to expressly forbid you from sharing gcode or configuration files generated with their program is acceptable practice to you, then go ahead and give them your money.

There are also ridiculously stupid path layout bugs in the product that the developer asserts are features. I also encourage you to check out their forum. It is not a friendly place and you can not post anything until they explicitly approve your first few posts manually. So don't post any complaints or issues.

There is a reason they don't have a trial. And their money back policy is only good once - they do not tell you that. Wouldn't matter, they can revoke your license for any reason they choose anyway.

Really glad you've pointed that out.

It basically amounts to Microsoft telling you anything you create using Word, they own and forbid you from sharing.

I know a few of us - myself included - have contacted them and explicitly asked them to clarify the language related to this in their license agreement. They actually said "we are not lawyers so we can't comment". It's their agreement for pete's sake. Surely they know what their intent is. But they would not share it.

mhackney wrote:I know a few of us - myself included - have contacted them and explicitly asked them to clarify the language related to this in their license agreement. They actually said "we are not lawyers so we can't comment". It's their agreement for pete's sake. Surely they know what their intent is. But they would not share it.

Bottom line that is shady crap that has no place in business. They may not be lawyers, but that had to sit in on the meetings to have the lawyers draft up the agreement for them. They know exactly what it means and their intent. Too many other good companies out there to give your money to.

Have you tried the latest Cura >= 2.3.1? It can be a bit cantankerous when it comes to setting up a delta, but once you get there, it has some really nice features as of late.

The cubic infill is incredibly strong vs. older infill patterns with very nice path managment.
It has Coasting which was a nice S3D feature, but in my experience, the default values offer significant improvement beyond what S3D provides.
The Alternate Extra Wall for the Shell does much to improve infill strength as well.
It also has the concept of Profiles like Slicer making it much easier to change and tweak.
Also, the Alternate Skin Rotation in the experimental section does wonders to eliminate pillowing if you are using a coarse infill without having a thick top layer.

Thank you so much for your points.
To a simple-user like me the product itself sounded really good.
But from what you told it doesn't sound like a product I want to spend my money on.
You convinced me to look for something else. I need to get more into the matter

And again I have to say: This here is a friendly place! Thank you all for your time and effort!

The new Cura is good and so is the special version of slic3r you can get from the prusa web site. This is the one to keep your eye on. I'm very impressed with it.

I will definitely take a closer look on Cura and KISS.
Will take some time

how do I import a profile into cura like yours mhackney?

before I upgraded my printer everything was fine... now I am at the beginning again.
never change a running system

may I ask if anyone could give me some hints what the best slicer settings to take for a thin but big part?!
or does anyone have time to slice it?! I would be really grateful and curious on your ideas.

thank you so much

I'm not a fan of Simplify 3D either, but ignoring the license issue it's not bad, IMO it basically has feature parity with the free slicers, and a better user interface than most of them. I suspect a lot of people find it easier to use just because it has decent built in profiles for a lot of printers.
Lots of people love it's support, I find it no better than the free sllicers, though it does allow you to manually place it, which I have used only once in fact to work around a bug where it would not place support correctly.

Is it worth it, I own it and I do use it occasionally to Slice things, but I'm pretty insensitive to the cost. KissSlicer is still my go to Slicer, probably followed by S3D and then Cura. I really like the new Cura, but it's falling into the Skeinforge trap of too many settings exposed, it has a simple mode where most of the settings are hidden, but I don't like some of the advanced feature defaults.

i'm a fan. it does the best at supports imo, and there are a lot of configurable option to deal with oozing/retracts and it has the best user interface of any slicer.


Seriously, what are the odds that you do something that is going to cause simplify3d to even notice you, must less revoke your liscense....

There support is lackluster and there forum is shit. But the software is pretty decent.

I have. End of story.

The revoked your liscense?

My 2 cents..

I have s3d and just about every other slicer you can think of.
s3d forum is crap, yes.
the actual program is great however. In my opinion.
3d printing is pretty much my job.
I have a lot of different machines with very different settings.
i find s3d the best and easiest to switch quickly betwen printers with the same model.

The choice is yours and i encourage you to try cura first as that is my backup.