The Ten Aspects of Quality

Based on 5 years of hands-on experience with 3D printing, we have defined The Ten Aspects of quality and are constantly evaluating and improving the software in line with these measures.

3D printing is, in many cases, an art of compromise - due to physical-world constraints it's difficult to obtain a good-looking, fast, durable, material-efficient print. While we're ever approaching this climax, we understand that each use-case is different, so we make it possible for you to express your preferences.

The Visual Aspect
Consistency of the result with source data, especially in areas visible by human eye from the outside

Getting a good-looking print is a priority for many. Voxelizer combines multiple smart algorithms to provide visual quality by default, building on our original research on quality improvement and nozzle pressure compensation.

Advanced start position determination finds the best position for starting and finishing printing each layer of the object, which is the most critical moment for achieving good quality.

Ambient occlusion mode extends this approach by determining which places of the model will be less visible when looking at the model and places all the risky extruder maneouvers there.

Print simulation makes it possible to see any potential problems with your print without wasting time and material for experimentation.

The Temporal Aspect
Time taken for the materialization process

Quicker prints mean more rapid iteration and better productivity.

We employ a number of mechanisms to ensure optimal printing time:

Quality/speed slider makes it possible to quickly and easily set your preference between visual quality and printing time.

Adaptive layer height uses a higher layer for vertical areas and a lower layer for horizontal areas, ensuring good balance between quality and printing time.

Print time prediction gives you an approximate forecast of your printing time (within ~15%), making it possible to rapidly adjust your settings with relation to how much time you have for the print.

Print simulation gives you exact printing time, including all the accelerations of the machine.

The Printability Aspect
Ability to transform and enhance source data to make it materializable

The slogan of Voxelizer is "Print anything". We want to be faithful to this by providing the best tools for the user to make every model printable:

  • Advanced support structures and algorithms, effective and easy to remove
  • 3D filters to fix any mesh issue like non-manifold edges, holes, noise, small objects...
  • Boolean operations to easily allow the local editing of the models
  • Mesh auto-reparing thanks to dedicated algorithms and to the voxelization process.

The Effortless Aspect
Human effort required between providing source data and obtaining the result

3d printing since it's inception has required the user to get acquainted with the various quirks of the machine and of the process itself.

Yet it doesn't have to be this way - the basic intelligence needed to make a succesful print may be encoded in the software, requiring human guidance only if some non-standard effect is intended.

For that reason we're trying to make the fabrication process as effortless as possible, enabling great prints with just a few clicks.

The Dimensional Aspect
Consistency of the result dimensions with source data

Dimensional accuracy is a need in many cases, such as when making a multi-part print or fitting the print with an external object. To ensure accuracy, we're regularily testing actual prints to ensure that accuracy is optimal.

The Material Aspect
Physical resources consumed during manufacturing

Reducing the amount of material for a given print simply means saving money.

Voxelizer includes a number of techniques for saving material:

Adaptive infill gives you just the amount of infill your print needs to hold together while minimizing material usage.

Microstructures filters make it possible to convert your model to openwork, greatly reducing the amount of material needed while keeping the original model's shape.

Smart support structures minimize the amount of material wasted by only placing the supports where they're really needed.

The Computational Aspect
Amount of computation required to obtain machine instructions

Voxelizer is in many cases much faster than other slicers, and we're continuing this trend with constantly optimizing our core algorithms.

Changable voxel size lets you express your preference between speed of computation and print precision - by default it sets itself in a balanced mode.

The Resistant Aspect
Ability of the resulting object to withstand stress of various nature

Mechanical resistance is often a need if the printed part is going to be used in some mechanism, not just put on the shelve.

Voxelizer includes a number of durability presets, letting you choose the right tools for the job.

The Robustification Aspect
Protection against disruption in the materialization process

It's no fun if half of your prints get detached from the table during printing or toppled over by the extruder.

That's why our presets and algorithms have a focus on robustifying the entire printing process - so that you can leave your machine the moment you instruct it to print and be confident that there will be no interruptions.

The Intention Aspect
Ability to capture and act upon user’s intentions

When approaching a personal fabrication project, you usually already have an idea of the result you'd like to accomplish.

The biggest role of the software here is to read this intention and act upon it. We're putting great weight to this aspect, providing a quick access to the most important tools and parameters while still providing advanced features to the pro-users.