Uploading issue

Support & Troubleshooting Form 2
1

Something is wrong with the upload utility in Preform. I download a print to the Form 2, and preform says it downloaded succesfully, but the printer is displaying the previous printjob, no matter what I do. Tried renaming it something different, didnt help. Tried rebooting the printer, that didnt help. Restarted Preform, same result. Deleted the offending print and was finally able to see the print I expected on the display.
So, I was able to get past this one, but this episode has cleared up some past mysteries for me. I have had instances in the past where changes to the model didnt show in the print. I put it off as human error on my part, but it was happening a lot. Now I realize that the Form 2 was just printing the previous job, not the one I had just downloaded. In those cases the changes were so small they couldnt have been seen on the display. In this last case the model was very different, so it didnt get past me.
When this happens, the print upload progresses normally on the printer all the way to complete, but then all of a sudden the display changes to the old print again.
OK, I know I will get beat up for improper naming, blah, blah, blah. I am not going to keep renaming every file for each minimal iteration, that would be insane. I should be able to rely on Preform, and the Form 2 to print what I send it, not something from the past while letting me think its the new upload.
I am pointing this out because I believe this is a serious bug in the software that NEEDS to be addressed to prevent lots of wasted resin everywhere there is a form 2 (or 3) I also think it would be helpful to add the upload timestamp to the display so there can be no doubt as to what print is about to consume resin. I have posted about this in the past, but only got beat up for it. Now I am convinced there is a legitimate concern here.

Thank You…Henry

2

Hey Henry,

I’m sorry to hear you’re having some issues with uploading prints! That’s certainly not the experience we want anyone to have.

The most efficient way to get the help you need is to contact our support team here and they’d be more than happy to investigate what might be going on a little more closely.

3

It will always display the last unprinted model as the “default” next print.

You need to go into the full list of models (second icon from the top, along the left side of the screen, the one that looks like three lines and a triangle) to get the full list, and confusingly, your newly uploaded files will show up after the unprinted one (they’re sorted oldest unprinted, to newest unprinted, then a separator, then all the printed files sorted the opposite direction, i.e. newest to oldest).

4

Thanks Ante, In my case, it reverts back to the last print (as you said) but it also prompts me to print as usual after a succesfull upload, except the part is not the one that uploaded. If its not obvious on the display, then its easy to assume you are printing what you just uploaded. The prompt makes you think you are printing what you just sent from Preform, which is fine so long as it is not invoked from an attempted download. If it is, then it should be crosschecked to ensure accurate prompting on the display. This is the logical way to drive this feature, but often these things get overlooked in development.

Thanks again…HD

5

Yeah, that part of the UI isn’t completely logical…