We have “Print by Object” which is great, but I’ve found myself wanting something one step smarter than this. It would be great to have a “Print by Filament/Color” sequence option as well that is a blend of By Layer and By Object. The idea is to group all parts on the plate by their filament used, then print each group in sequence where all parts in the group are printed at the same time by layer. This would probably only make sense for parts that are a single filament each, i.e. no color painting.
I’m not sure if the description above is clear, so here’s an example. Say you had a plate containing 10 different parts, where 3 of them print in filament A and 7 print in filament B. The current print sequence options would only allow me to print all objects at the same time by layer, resulting in many wasteful filament changes, or print each object at a time, which only works if there is sufficient room on the plate to leave a safety margin around each part for the toolhead. Realistically what I have to do today instead is just do two separate prints, one for each filament. This is less efficient than ideal since it requires manual operations to clear the plate and start the next print.
The new option I’m proposing would instead print all three parts in filament A first (or vice versa for filament B), then do a single filament swap and print the parts in the other filament. This means you’d only need a safety margin between each group of parts, instead of between every part, allowing for greater build plate efficiency even while printing parts with multiple filaments.
Alongside the new print sequence I’d also want auto-arrange to be updated to group the parts by filament to optimize the build plate if that sequence was selected.
