1 Topic by adrian

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Topic: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

So.. rather than just spitting out my 'nightlies', I figured that following the proverb 'give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you will feed him for life...' I would instead build a portable-perl dev environment so you can not only have the very latest slic3r, but as it is currently changing on a daily basis, rebuild your own! smile

Firstly, I recommend using the Repetier-0.90D 'dev' version of Retpier-Host, available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Ieez … WROemVTTm8

The Slic3r Development Environment is available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Ieez … WYxek5UWUk

Download the Slic3r file and install it anywhere - I personally use d:\strawberry-slic3r since its less charcters to type - It doesn't matter as its designed to be moveable.

The distribution is of the preferred Strawberry Perl 32-Bit v5.14.  Note - the slic3r recommendations are to use 32-Bit - EVEN ON 64BIT Systems! - I have also pre-cpan'ed all the required versions of modules for the slic3r builds (including alex's Math-Libm, and I've 'fixed' Alien-WxWidgets).

This IDE is the current one I used on my Win8.1 64-Bit system, and should work fine on 8.1 32-Bit as its a 32-bit perl binary and libraries. For Win7 - you *may* need to rebuild (see below).

Inside the top directory is a 'slic3r.bat' file - Consider this the replacement for your slic3r.exe BUT Do NOT move things around or it wont work smile

To 'use' the new Slic3r, configure Reptier-Host (any version) using the 'Setup' button on the Slic3r Tab. Set the 'Profiles' directory to be correct (usually your home directory\AppData\Roaming\Slic3r - I dont have RH loaded where I am typing this sorry)
Set the 'Slic3r App' (second field) to point to the slic3r.bat file.

Now save and click 'configure', and after a pause, you should see slic3r appear and the ton of new options. You may also get a dialog box from Alex regarding the new Support changes (as in Support in gcode - not technical wink )

To Rebuild this, or any other later version:

  • Go to Github and download the latest slic3r from https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r and click on 'Download Zip' . Move your existing 'Slic3r-master' directory to a new name (when slic3r isn't running!) to say Slic3r-old, and unpack the NEW Slic3r-master you just downloaded.

  • Open the Strawberry Perl folder, and run the 'portableshell' bat file.

  • type the following:

cd Slic3r-master
perl Build.PL
perl Build.PL --gui

  • If everything completes, you'll have a brand new version of slic3r.pl sitting in Slic3r-master and thats it! you're done! smile


You can run Slic3r directly as well by just double clicking on 'slic3r.bat' in the Strawberry Perl directory. This will also display then Slic3r's "Platter" tab.

I have tested this on a couple of Win boxes I have handy, and it worked - so do let me know how it goes for yourselves!

(Tip re Repetier-Host 0.90D - the 'Deep Analysis' button works well, but seems to only repair single failure vectors each pass - so if a model has multiple faults (intersections, faces, flipped triangles etc) clicking "Deep Analysis" multiple times will repair it more completly.)

*Please* let me know how it works out for you all either way.

2 Reply by adrian (edited by adrian 2013-11-15 12:37:00)

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

I forgot to mention - the current makefiles have a typo in the slic3r master branch that effects windows. This means that its not 'pre-cleaning' when you tell it to rebuild.

If you try and rebuild and get lots of errors - Open 'portableshell.bat' and type:

%drivep%\Slic3r-master\xs\Build.bat distclean

This will clean out the working files from the previous build, which can cause issues *occasionally* ..

The above is ONLY an issue if you are rebuilding an existing Slic3r-master directory - if you replace it as is needed now (see below post that tells you to do this due to the new patch), don't worry as you have a brand new empty working directory at that point.

Then to rebuild again, just:

cd %drivep%\Slic3r-master
perl Build.PL
perl Build.PL --gui

3 Reply by adrian (edited by adrian 2013-11-15 12:31:05)

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

LOL smile

This is why I did what I did wink

Alessandro has been fiddling with threading (again) - this caused an issue with the slic3r for the past week where it would slice first time fine, but subsequent runs with multiple threads on different random cpu cores caused Voronoi.pm to barf.

Long story short - Alessandro has *just* (25mins ago) pushed a patch to GitHub. I've tested at it would appear to have resolved the issue - hitting 'slice' 5 times in Repetier-Host got it to slice 5 times big_smile

Soooo... Go to https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r/archive/master.zip , delete the current Slic3r-master folder in the strawberry-perl folder, unpack the new one, open portableshell.bat and run:

cd %drivep%\Slic3r-master
perl Build.PL
perl Build.PL --gui

Done! You'll now have the patched and working fresh-from-30-minutes-ago Slic3r smile

4 Reply by muddtt

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

Thanks for all this!

5 Reply by 2n2r5 (edited by 2n2r5 2013-11-15 23:50:28)

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

Blah, my previous post didn't stick. Long story short, this is awesome! If you are debating on whether it is worth using a dev build, it is. There are so many wonderful improvements that you would be crazy not to try this. Slicing times rival if not surpass that of Simplify3D Creator (which is really fast). Also, as pointed out before, the support is ridiculous. I haven't seen too many auto supports that work this well.

Thanks Adrian!

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6 Reply by Tomek

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

I appreciate the teaching us how to do it! I've never really learned how to use git and compiling builds. I really needed some better supports for one file so I checked the forums to see if you made this thread...and you had!

I'll go ahead and give it a shot.

7 Reply by adrian

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Be sure to grab the very latest download from GitHub.

8 Reply by Tomek

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

Ok! I struggled a bit first time around. I am running Win7 64 bit and after I pointed repetier 0.9D (which found my profiles directory by itself) to the slic3r.bat, it wasn't working. If I clicked configure slic3r wouldn't show up, and running a slice would crash.

So I tried a rebuild, via your directions, andddd, after a bunch of "up to date" reports, the perl script-thing said that it failed to compile. It suggested using --force. Instead, I tried to rerun the .bat "as administrator" even though this login is an admin. Before that I tried the distclean.

Distclean gave an issue that sounded like what Repetier reported when a slice would crash (due to my attempted update.)  "C:\ Program is not a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file."  Worth noting that my strawberry is in the "Program (X86)" folder of my comp.

Since you mentioned you just left strawberry in root, I went back and moved it to there. That failed again, but I was willing to hope maybe it failed because there was nothing to clean. So then I tried the compile command again .

This time it went further.. THIS TIME IT WORKED. So, hey, I don't really know what I'm doing, but your instructions got me through it smile.

Thank you, sir adrian.

EDIT: Ok, it sorta works for me. Repetier 0.90C i can get to interface, not 0.90D. I must be doing something wrong for 0.90D
Edit2: WOOOoooh 0.90D just started responding too! Tales of a software noob...

9 Reply by adrian (edited by adrian 2013-11-16 04:21:24)

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

great stuff.

Yeah - I should probably just state for ease of avoiding the 'space in a pathname needs to be encapsulated with quotes on windows thing' - its probably better to just make this live in c:\ or d:\ or whatever.

So tip for everyone else: Don't move this into a pathname with a space in the name, such as "Program Files". I should have prepared for that better by making sure I escaped paths etc - but I didn't so sorry wink. I'm a unix guy so normally dont even entertain spaces in pathnames by habit lol smile

And yes - first time you run it, it can take a moment longer than usual as it updates stuff. Forgot to mention that.

Also - you *can* swap back and forth slic3r versions - even though the profile files get updated with the new config options, the older-current version (if that makes sense tongue ) will ignore unknown option statements and thus continue to function. So just further tidbit for anyone who wants to test the waters so to speak...

And again for everyone: Get the latest Slic3r-master from Github I linked to a few posts up and replace the included Slic3r-master folder - a major bug is fixed.

10 Reply by adrian

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Re: Slic3r 1.0-dev windows environment - With the improved Support

Just to keep everyone posted as I know if you aren't familiar github issues can be hard to track; but as slic3r approaches 1.0RC1, there's 3 current major "blocking" issues with building.

#1 and #2 are dealt with if you use the IDE I built above, and #3 is a non-issue with Strawberry-Perl (which again, we use if you use the above IDE.)

For others who are doing this on linux etc, or just more adventurous, note the following issues and resolutiongs:

Let's track here all the failures in prerequisites:

Test::Harness has a failing test.
Workaround: install with cpanm --force Test::Harness
Upstream bug: https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=75375

Wx 0.9922 fails to compile.
Workaround: install the previous version with cpanm Wx~0.9921 (no need when using CitrusPerl because it already ships with a precompiled working Wx)
Upstream bug: https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=88101

OpenGL fails to compile on Windows 64-bit when using CitrusPerl because CitrusPerl's MinGW doesn't ship a precompiled FreeGLUT (while Strawberry Perl does) and the precompiled one that ships with the OpenGL module itself is compiled for 32-bit.
Workaround: use Strawberry Perl or install the OpenGL module manually after replacing FreeGLUT.dll with a precompiled 64-bit one.
Upstream bug: http://sourceforge.net/p/pogl/bugs/4/

While these issues are not under our direct control we should address all of them with automatic workarounds in Build.PL