Makerbot software

Makerware won't even let you manually control the printer. That means filament changes, pre-heating bed, etc all must be done through the printer's control panel.

Cura might work well for what you want.  It can slice models and is very fast.  I don't know if it has manual control buttons, but neither does makerware.  It is primarily used with Ultimaker printers, however it works just as well with the Solidoodle or any other reprap type printer.  It is also, in my opinion, the best looking open source host software.

If you have a solidoodle, its because he kinda paid 5x the cost of a solidoodle for that ease of use.  The Solidoodle is a machine for DIYers and is priced as such.  All of this is my opinion, by the way.

Yeah, Repetier did give me a lot of problems at first, but eventually it did become usable.  Especially the new versions with the new Slic3r version.

I'm using Cura just about every way imaginable to control my stock Solidoodle 4.  I downloaded 14.01 at first to generate gcode because it is a STUPID-FAST slicer.  Every time you make an adjustment to the part or a setting, it automatically begins slicing again in the background and is done just a couple of seconds later.  On a whim I asked it to print and the control interface opened up showing everything I needed to manually control the machine, edit gcode, etc. I hit print and was serendipitously printing 5 minutes after plugging into the printer.  I later pasted some gcode into RH for Solidoodle 0.85 just to complete the experiment I had intended to, and that workflow worked as well, but seriously, why bother.  A lot of the recent changes to MakerWare were sparked by Cura-envy, and it still has a long way to go before it achieves what the Ultimaker developers have done with their software. 

Some of the features that really makes Cura stand out for me is that it does multiple parts like a dream and you can sink parts into the bed and then duplicate/flip to split parts that are too big to print in one piece.  You don't want to try printing without configuring first because it is written for Ultimakers, which have lighter print heads thanks to the bowden design, and can go much faster because of this.  It also supports multiple extruders and you can use 1 extruder for support and others for part materials.  The visual interface is also much smoother than what you get from MakerWare, especially when viewing sliced parts and toolpath visualizations.  No matter how big the cajones are in your rig, MakerWare can't take full advantage like Cura can.  To me, both of these packages are head-and-shoulders above all other interfaces for desktop opensource 3D printers, and Cura is even worthy of a league above MakerWare.

My only issue, and this is still a big one that I may be able to solve if I look into it, is that I have to power-cycle my printer and reboot my laptop between prints.  Obviously this isn't insurmountable, just mildly inconvenient, but since I was having the same issue printing through RH, I'm really not complaining at all.

I downloaded Cura yesterday, with the intent of installing and playing around with it on my SD4.  I'd be interested in a dedicated thread.