I have plenty of memory and a good enough GPU…
My slicers don’t crash, not even on the 128gb gaming rig I had for a while.
But I did have plenty of slicing crashes until the actual problems were fixed - even on a 8GB system.
I found some main issues and if it fits try the fixes…
One major issues with my slicers was the GPU support paired with badly configured drivers.
For example the Nvidia Studio drivers quite often caused crashes because of their optimization for totally different things.
On the other hand the Game Ready drivers often had issues with new releases and taking over the CORRECT settings.
No need for the latest driver unless the one running is known to be buggy…
Another problem was memory usage…
Having Firefox open with a dozen of so tabs can eat a lot of memory and unless Windows is told otherwise it loves to creates a mess between actual RAM, Virtual Memory and swapfile use.
For me it was never memory leaks, it was the constant shuffling of data between ram and other locations causing timing issues.
Most slicers are not kind enough to allow for extra time if the start of the slicing was fine.
Then the memory runs low with all those complex calculations and Windoofy start to ‘free memory’…
If this then takes longer than what the slicer expects or tolerates it either looses code or gives up with memory issues.
Last but not least: The model itself…
When people talk about big, highly detailed or complex models than quite often the model is far from it.
In reality it is the mesh that way too dense or detailed
Some creators only really care about the ease of use of their apps and the look of the final model - with no need or consideration for 3D printing.
There is a lot of models where you can reduce the triangle count by over 50% without being able to see any visual difference, let alone one in the print…
Especially when it comes to STL files it is quite possible to end up with defects - defects most slicers correct on the fly during slicing.
You only get warnings and the option to correct them if they WILL cause a slicing issue.
Quite often you see a slice fail around the same time every time.
Reduce the size by 25% or so and if it then slices just fine and WITHOUT slowing down big time once or twice you know it is NOT the model to blame.
Just give the mesh reduction a try if the model is not of technical nature or so…
What about the fixes not mentioned above?
If you can try a different computer or laptop as the first option.
working there means the other computer is to blame.
If more than one slicer fail with THIS model - have you tried a different one of similar file size and complexity ?
Just one model failing while even more complex ones slice fine usually means the model itself has some issues the slicer can’t deal with properly.
Don’t change the task priority for the slicer in Windows…
A higher priority does not help you if the system is otherwise busy, in fact it can make things far worse.
Check the memory usage in the task manager.
Right next to it you can see the CPU usage.
If the slicing requires more physical memory than what you have left empty Windoofy WILL give you a hard time…
Your slicer stuck with well over 95% CPU usage and if enabled also doing the same to your GPU is NOT a good thing
You need a really well working system in order to get away with such extremes if you deal with ‘bad’ (for slicing) models.
But adjusting the slicer so it won’t use all CPU sores and all power as the default you will have far less headaches.
And realistically those few seconds of extra waiting for the slicing to complete always beats the swearing when you have to try it again, again and then some times
In case I wasn’t clear above with complex and such:
IF you mean this in terms of file size based on things like triangle count and such ask yourself if you REALLY need this high level of details.
It is usually NOT those models coming from CAD programs that cause headaches, it the models from programs like Blender and such which rely on those many triangle and won’t care what this means for printing needs.
Even something as simple a herringbone planetary gearbox can be yours for as little as a few kb or as much as well over 15mb - go figure, all depends on how it was created and what software was used.
For future reference it might be helpful to provide a link for the model in question so that people can do further checks.