Preform Requests: Hollow, Drain holes, Agitate, Preheat, Support touch-down selection

Feature Requests & Ideas
1

Forgive me if some/any of these options are already present in current versions of PreForm. If so, please point them out, so I can begin taking advantage of them.

Hollow model
Currently, users need to use MeshMixer, Zbrush or other DCC apps for this task. I think hollowing via PreForm would be preferable. You could even have a suggested thickness (or thickness warning) for different print scales. It appears some competitors applications have already included this functionality.

Add Drain Hole
Optimal drain hole position recommendations and cutting (boolean) based on orientation, scale, etc. It appears some competitors applications have already included this functionality.

Stir/Agitate Tank
Agitate the resin in the tank with the wiper (Form 2) rather than risking contamination or scratching by me stirring the tank with a metal spatula. It could also do this on a timed basis, when the machine is powered, but not in use, to prevent settling issues with the resins.

Preheat tank
After users start Preform, load a model, select the printer, layer height, and resin, etc, it could prompt the user “Would you like to begin preheating the tank now?” to the optimal temperature for that resin.

Support Touch-Down preference
Frequently, I’ll place a support point, with a tiny touch radius, only to have Preform make the base of that support somewhere on the model itself, instead of a raft, marring the surface in an undesirable fashion. I’d like to be able, instead, to select alternate base locations for these touch-points. What good is a tiny touch-point if the software is going to automatically place a much larger origin on the surface of my model?

Thank you for your consideration.

8 Likes
2

YEs this needs to be added… what a pain to use other software for this task

3

another feature i would like is a non random support point generation. An orthogonal one for technical pieces would be far better.

1 Like
4

I know it’s been 2+ years since I made this thread, but I’m pretty dismayed to find that Formlabs has apparently not implemented ANY of these changes in that time. A cursory browsing of the threads here indicates that some of these specific requests are desired by a large portion of the userbase.

Really, what excuse does Formlabs have for this complete failure to match these basic features? They are available in software for competing systems. I can order an entire printer WITH these software features, and it will cost almost the same as 1L of FL resin.

This is an epic failure, in my opinion, of their software team to address well-known, critical and longstanding deficiencies with Preform. Not to mention the disastrous warping problem present in the Form3…

1 Like
5

I agree with all these feature requests, I also feel these same pain points.

One thing I suggest to others is to send these feature requests as tickets to support. I suspect those have more weight than forum posts, and I’m not sure if anyone who is in a decision making position actually reads the forums anyway.

I imagine that the more support tickets they have for a specific feature request, the easier it is to quantify whether they should work on feature a vs feature b

I’m just hypothesizing all of this though…

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6

Hey everyone, just wanted to update this thread and let you all know that the features you’ve been asking for, like Part Hollowing, Drain Holes, Model Texturing, and more, have been added!

Check out the full details in our latest forum post here. Thanks again for all your feedback!

1 Like