I love that I can press shift-tab to hide the printer tools tab on the left, but what stinks is when your tool menu robs most of the center of the screen. Would be great if there were a way to get this menu out of high profile screen location.
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That’s a fantastic idea!!! But don’t hold your breath expecting Bambu to read much less consider a suggestion in this sub forum. In fact, they’ve show bias against our suggestions and have actually gone out of their way to double-down and make things worse such as the chamber light turn-off suggestion. It was suggested in this forum many times as an option. So what did Bambu do? They made it permanently on so that you had to turn it off manually on each print. I guess they showed us who’s the boss, didn’t they? 
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But fear not. There is a group of fellow hobbyists in the Orca Slicer community who have embellished Bambu Studio with all of the quality of life enhancements like this one below.
What I might suggest is to post a message in their Github forum where such ideas are harvested and if someone in the Orca community of developers agrees, they will take on that portion of the code. This is how we got tear-away and collapsible control panel in Orca in the first place which is similar to your idea.
You can make suggestions in their issues page. Here is the link:
Click here for https://github.com/SoftFever/OrcaSlicer/issues/new/choose
You’ll need either a Microsoft free live login since Github is a Microsoft site or you can sign up with a separate ID. Either way, if you are posting for the first time, it may take a few hours before you post appears to give their anti-spam algorithm time to work.
Here’s the break-away features that I was mentioning. If you like the shift-hide features, you’re going to love this feature especially useful on multiple monitors. It allows one to undock the control panel and move it anywhere leaving the preview and prepare screen to itself. It’s quite handy but only available in Orca Slicer!
Here’s the hide feature. It is like the Shift-Hide feature in Bambu Studio but on a whole other level. Again, only available in Orca Slicer.
Thanks so much for this! I was using Orca briefly before I got the Bambu printer. Since getting the Bambu, I’ve been a bit intimidated to go back to Orca in that I’ve enjoyed the ease of use of the Bambu studio and noticed that they have all of their filament so tightly tuned.
Is this something that you lose when you go to Orca? Do you lose any of the high speed printing features in Orca?
Thanks again!
I’m a bit confused by that statement because Orca Slicer is Bambu Studio. It’s a fork of the original code and the developers–with only very minor deviations–have made modifications only to the Bambu open source code on Github. In fact, Bambu has borrowed some features introduced in Orca. It’s like the teacher learning from the student.
If I were to compare them, Orca Slicer retains 99% of Bambu Studio’s user interface but offers 120% of the functionality. Listing all the features Orca has that Bambu lacks would take a 1,000-line post, while identifying the few features exclusive to Bambu Slicer would require just a few lines. For example, Bambu introduced the “Bambu Cube” to compete with the Voron Cube and Orca Cube. While this may help their branding, their cube feels lackluster compared to Orca’s, which not only includes a threaded cap for simultaneous tolerance testing but also highlights the lack of innovation in Bambu’s design.
My main reason for choosing Orca is its built-in calibration tools. In contrast, my biggest frustration with Bambu Slicer is the forced Makerworld promotions, which Orca allows users to disable but Bambu requires users to click through. That Makerworld landing page isn’t for user convenience—if it were, they’d let us bypass it, as Orca does. Instead, it marks the beginning of a marketing strategy where each update introduces more ads. It’s only a matter of time before users are forced to click through filament ads or sales promotions just to access the slicer.
I’m surprised Bambu hasn’t blocked Orca yet. Orca still relies on the Bambusource.dll library to interface with printer firmware, which Bambu deliberately keeps locked and undocumented. Requiring an authentication key to block third-party software entirely would be an easy move for them.
Example of a feature Bambu Studio does not have, the Fusion360-like navigation cube.
Although this is only the tip of the iceberg, since your original post was about improving the user interface, check out this handy little feature. Don’t worry, it can be turned off if one doesn’t like it but it just illustrates the thoughtful measures that Orca developers who are just fellow hobbyists like us, have added to their user experience.
Great explanation. I did realize that Bambu could so easily flip a switch so to speak and take out Orca. It definitely looks like it is better in many ways. My concern was more related to the high volume print speeds that seem built into Bambu studios for the Bambu filament. Since I’m not great at calibrating filament, I was a bit worried. However since your last message, I’ve been watching videos and trying to learn more. I’m actually trying to calibrate a filament now using the suggested approach below. Maybe I’ll just switch over to Orca now and start from there! Thanks again!
(From reddit - link)
- look up manufacturer recommended specs as a starting point - or run the stock generic settings, either is fine.
- calibrate with printer specific tests / prints (Flow Dynamics and Flow Rate) if you’re on X1C don’t forget to use a smooth build plate to give the lidar best conditions possible.
- print temp tower – if the best segment is close to your current temp or spot on just set it there and go to step 4.If it’s a bigger difference (I’d say 10°C or more difference) still set to temp tower temp you like best and back to step 2, just so the printer stores new values with the new temp. if you perform step 2 again you could print another temp tower to check again - or not, should be fine, I most times don’t
- print a max flow test - you can find it in the link below, make sure to carefully read the instructions and follow them.I wouldn’t recommend leaving your printer unattended - you can in the first couple minutes as it starts off slow, but you are going to cancel this mid print so be ready to do so. keep your eyes peeled and your ears headphone free - might see or hear first, that there’s issues and there’s absolutely no need to waste filament if the printer is already struggling to keep up.
- take a caliper and measure - adjust your volumetric flow accordingly (there’s instructions on how to measure at the link)
If you haven’t already seen this set of videos, they are arguably the shortest yet most thorough ones I’ve found on the topic of calibration. They are not perfect but come close. I find myself revisiting them repeatedly to see what else I can learn. Over time, I’ve somewhat exhausted his knowledge and even noticed a couple of mistakes—not obvious ones, but more a case of naivety. Still, in my view, he offers the best-in-class tutorial that’s under 12 minutes and he is Orca-focused.
CHEP at filament Friday is another resource that I found has some great inputs that can be applied to Orca. But he tends to say in 20 minutes what can be said in 5 and his bias is towards not Bambu printers using Cura. Nevertheless, he is worth checking out.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Watching now!
By default, if you log into the Bambu cloud with Studio and OrcaSlicer, your presets and calibrations are all kept in sync. Any changes you make to supported settings from one slicer will also appear in the other one.
One exception is pressure advance. In OrcaSlicer, PA is enabled and stored in the filament profile and overrides the value that might be set on the Device tab. Studio does not recognize PA in the filament profile (even though it is present in the JSON file).
Hi again! Thanks again for your guidance. I’ve been printing using Orca recently and it is going well. I still have not calibrated a filament, and I really need to do one now.
I watched the videos and am impressed with Elli’s tuning guide. I would like to do a pressure advance test using his tool, but in the very first question to setup the G-code, it asks what firmware I am using… I don’t know what to put in there to calibrate my P1S.
I also tried the PA pattern test in Orca, but it only generated a tiny little rectangle on my build plate… Surprisingly the same thing that happens shows up at the end of this teaching tech video (link to exact time).
The full pattern will appear after you slice.
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@lkraus is correct. Ignore the Ellis script page. That is there solely if one has to manually create a PA Pattern. Orca does this automatically. It is misleading because in the preview page, all you get is that little square. But as @lkrause stated, the pattern will show once it’s sliced.
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Thanks all! That explains it. I also found it in the Orca wiki now too!