nanoDLP

ultimasnake

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 4

Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Hi all!

I'm new to NanoDLP or better yet to SLA printing all together. Coming from FDM printing for about 2 years i'm convinced I have to forget everything I knew about 3d printing... Anyway, i've done a few prints now (minor once) but think I have some minor interface/interaction suggestions right off the bat ;-). They might be minimal and I might tackle some points through github if I find the chance (since I'm a developer/user interaction designer). Forget me if I'm to straight forward maybe some of my suggestions are totally not in line with the way you all want to approach the software

General
- Maybe it's nice during print to show an small status bar during print on other screens clearly showing the printer is actually running (the idea of the interface is of course see the status whilst not near the printer)
- I might have missed it but is there a button in the interface to turn off the second Fan?

Plates
- There are many icons shown on screen making it very cluttered, maybe some of these could just be icons (edit, download, layers aka view)
- I think it would make more sence to disable some buttons whilst a print is running
- Resume printing seems odd when the print is not the last running print (right?)
- 'Slicing:' I noticed that a print I made had the orientation incorrect for the bed meaning half my print was not rendered on the bed. I'm guessing auto rotation when a print would not fit would not be that hard (right?) when width/height are different from (overlapping) the bedsize?
- Layers view: Would benefit greatly from changing image while sliding (instead of on change) and/or using arrow keys to more quickly go back/forward while checking the layers (the latter being the easiest I guess)
- Layers view: Remember if Toggle details was turned on (have to turn them on each time I view a new plate)
- Layers view: Render 2 layers over each other (in different tint through css?), making sure that all layers are attached could be easier if the current + previous layer are shown over each other

Resin profiles:
- Give a profile a colour for an 'icon' I can image if you have one brand of SLA but many colours an icon could make it easier to find all your 'red' profiles for instance
- Make the overview between burn-in layers and Normal layers features line up, right now it's quite hard to read the difference between both layers since the burn-in layers starts with how many layers you want to create.

Z-axis
- Clicking a button which will exceed the Z-height: whilst on 150 clicking on 50 will not work because it would have gone to 200 of the 180 that is possible which means that to reach 180 I now have to press 10mm 3 times. I know I could have pressed 'top' but since I was pressing 50mm 3 times the fourth time could just have added 150 + 50 and then turn it to the maximum possible value

Well this is all I can think of right now, I've noticed there are 2 devs on the Github project, maybe I'll contact one of them to see if I can spend some of my free-time on this project that will surely help me loads with working on my new Wanhao D7!

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Hi,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for the good advises.

I do not expect nanodlp to grow this much and it needs extensive rewrite on UI part.

I agree with the most of your suggestions.

- I might have missed it but is there a button in the interface to turn off the second Fan?
You can add it using custom button feature on the setup page.

- Resume printing seems odd when the print is not the last running print (right?)
You can resume from layer specified, but you are right single button will be enough to handle both action.

ultimasnake

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 4

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Hi Shahin,

I can imagine things can go rather quick when you get an audience. I just found the custom button option that's nice thanks for that I'll add it after my next print.

I think the interface is quite nice and straight to the point but has indeed outgrown it's feature list a bit. If I find some spare time I could look into some of these points, I can't give full-time support but maybe since I'm going to use your product much more I can be of some assistance here and there in my spare time . Feel free to contact me about this, I could start with a git branch and you can merge the changes back that you like

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Great, Please let me know when you want to start, so I will push update to repo.

I believe if we could move to angular or similar frameworks it will be great as rest-api could be used for mobile app or other applications.

ultimasnake

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 4

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Hey Shahin,

Been quite busy at work (and in private) but I've just attempted to change some things on the plates screen that seemed to make sense to me. Tried to adept most of your code style (though I'm more of a place spaces/tabs kinda guy) Visually it's quite simple right now but comes to:

- Hiding the ID saving some GUI space [i'm quite sure a User has no use for this]
- Combined Start new print and continue print with seperate messages depending on either layer 0 (default) or continue layer value greater then 0 [Cleaner look]
- Moved slicing bar underneath available space underneath the start print [Saving vertical space limiting a print to 2 rows at all time] [Could use some better alignment]

I've made a fork of your git branch and committed the changes, have a look and let me know how you think they are

https://github.com/on-d-mand/ui

Last edited by ultimasnake (2018-03-27 21:07:10)

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Looks great, thank you.

Could you submit pull request for each changes individually. I have update ui repo to the latest version pull first.

ultimasnake

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 4

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Sorry i've been on a small holiday and still am. I made it a single pull request it's just a few lines of changed code

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

Re: Minor suggestions from a new (sla printing) User!

Thanks, add a few comments on the pull request.