Feature Detection

This brand new (as of the time of this writing) feature can dramatically boost your quality when using Octolapse. It works by matching the speeds within your gcode file to your Octolapse printer profile settings and only allowing snapshots over non-critical print features like infill or inner perimeters. Because of this you must first enter your current slicer settings into your Octolapse printer profile exactly BEFORE using feature detection.

If your printer profile speed settings match your slicer settings (and your current gcode file), these settings will allow you to enable or prevent snapshots from occurring over certain elements.

Unique Speeds

Feature detection works best if every feature is set to a unique speed. If more than one element is printed at the same speed, Octolapse will use the most permissive setting. For example, if you are printing infill and external perimeters at the same speed, but only have enabled 'Infill' within the feature detection, Octolapse will allow snapshots to be taken over both infill and external perimeters (outlines).

How to detect and fix non-unique speeds

If you have any non-unique speeds you will see a similar error message while entering your slicer speeds within your Octolapse printer profile:

Non-Unique Speed Warnings

Note that the list of non-unique speeds is collapsed by default, so you need to click on 'Show Non-Unique Speed Errors' before the details will become visible.

Here Octolapse detects that Perimeters, Small Perimeters and External Perimeters cannot be distinguished from one another. This is not good since printing on External and Small Perimeters can leave nasty artifacts on your print, but it is generally safe to take a snapshot while printing regular Perimeters (inner perimeters).

In this example we are using 'Slic3r PE' as our slicer type. Looking at the settings that control the speeds for these features we see the following:

Non-Unique Speeds in Slic3r PE

Here you can see that the speeds for all of these features are identical. You can adjust these speeds in your slicer very slightly so that they are all unique without affecting your print quality. I'm going to adjust the speeds so that they vary by 0.1 mm/sec, which should have a negligible effect on print quality.

Unique Speeds in Slic3r PE

Now we have to copy these settings into our Octolapse printer profile like so:

All unique speeds in Octolapse printer profile!

Now the previous non-unique speed warnings should go away. Repeat this process until you have no non-unique speeds and feature detection will be maximally effective.

Notes about Rounding

Some slicers perform some behind-the-scenes rounding when generating speeds within the final gcode file. Octolapse does its best to account for this when detecting features and reporting non-unique speed warnings. If your settings appear to be unique, but Octolapse is saying they are not, it may be due to rounding issues. In this case you will need to increase the difference between your speeds until Octolapse reports that your speeds are non-unique.

Notes about speed multipliers (percents)

Some slicers allow (or even require) speed multipliers within the speed settings. For speed multipliers a formula is applied which will calculate the speeds based on the multiplier and one or more other settings. See the slicer specific feature document for details if you are having trouble here.

Feature Detection By Slicer Type

The features that can be detected vary by the slicer type selected within your printer profile, and each feature is named to correspond as closely as possible with the slicer terminology. If you change your slicer, be sure to update the slicer type and settings within your printer profile, and be sure to adjust any feature detection settings you have configured within your snapshot profile.

See the links below for slicer specific details:

• Cura
• Simplify 3D
• Slic3r Prusa Edition
• Other (generic) Slicer

Limitations of Feature Detection

If you have auto-cooling enabled, or any other feature that slows (or speeds up) the current layer, Octolapse will not be able to detect features properly on those layers, or may misidentify the feature being printed.