Identifying code or number for each print

As a jeweler I am constantly printing, making small changes, and then printing again. Sometimes the changes are so small that you can barely even see them in preform, let alone on the printers display. So what happens is while I’m doing a million things I’ll hit print, move on to something else while for a minute, and then when I go to hit print on the printer I have doubts whether I’m seeing my latest model on the screen, or if I maybe forgot to hit print and it’s still showing my previous one. So I hit print again, and then actually watch the printer display to see “uploading X%”.

I think a nice solution to this non problem would be a tiny box on screen in preform after you hit send. Either in one of the corners or next to the “Track print online” button that would show a random 4 character code. The printer would have the same code displayed in a corner when showing a model on screen to make it easier to verify that you are in fact printing the correct version of your print.

Like I said above this is kind of a non-problem, but something that would make my daily use just a little bit more efficient. I’d love to see this simply as some option that you could enable if you wanted it and I can’t imagine it’d be to hard for the programmers to implement in a future update.

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Just change the name for every revision you upload, at least, that’s what I do.

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That is one solution. Like I said his is a Non-issue. It’s not that it couldn’t be solved by the user, but it’d be a nice little addition to the functionality of preform.

Yup, on as default would probably grind some gears, but might be a nice little addition if not a PITA to implement.

To take it a step further it would be nice to track changes to a pre-existing form file. You know, as long as we are requesting the ability to be lazy users. :wink: This could be displayed somewhere in the GUI or even appended to the file name.

ex. “Sample Part.form (+2% scale; pt size .6mm)”

I don’t know that there’s a way for preform to automatically identify what changes you’ve made and the include that in the file name. I think that the best way would just to be to add it to the file name yourself.

I can add the version number myself to the file name but the problem is the printer doesn’t show the full file name and putting the additional text at the beginning of the file name would really mess up sorting files. Which is what lead me to the code idea.

I was going to post a similar suggestion so I will add it here. I was thinking Preform could add indented numbers on the underside of the support base structure. That way you can tell which part is which after removing them from the build platform. I also do multiple revisions of very similar parts and sometimes it is impossible to know what is what after removing from the build platform. Even knowing what is what on the building platform, i would have to soak and process the parts separately so i can mark them once they are cured. If the underside was etched with a number this would be easy. Not a big issue though.

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Not a bad idea at all. Or even an option to add your own text to the bottom of the base. That would be tremendously helpful. It would however lesson the surface area meaning it could come off the build platform slightly easier, but I think that would be a minuscule loss of adhesion. Or simply allow us to add the text on the top of the base.

Yeah, that’s how I read it. Downside to this approach is that depending on the string of characters there may not be room to fit them all. Bottom would be best in that regard.

If just a few characters are being used they would fit on the pry-hoods no problem. =]