Cura

Cura

This is the new, shiny frontend for Cura. daid/Cura is the old legacy Cura that everyone knows and loves/hates.

We re-worked the whole GUI code at Ultimaker, because the old code started to become a unmaintainable.

Logging Issues

Use this template to report issues. New issues that do not adhere to this template will take us a lot longer to handle and will therefore have a lower pirority.

For crashes and similar issues, please attach the following information:

• (On Windows) The log as produced by dxdiag (start -> run -> dxdiag -> save output)
• The Cura GUI log file, located at
  • %APPDATA%\cura\<Cura version>\cura.log (Windows), or usually C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\cura\<Cura version>\cura.log
  • $User/Library/Application Support/cura/<Cura version>/cura.log (OSX)
  • $USER/.local/share/cura/<Cura version>/cura.log (Ubuntu/Linux)

If the Cura user interface still starts, you can also reach this directory from the application menu in Help -> Show settings folder

Dependencies

• Uranium Cura is built on top of the Uranium framework.
• CuraEngine This will be needed at runtime to perform the actual slicing.
• PySerial Only required for USB printing support.
• python-zeroconf Only required to detect mDNS-enabled printers

Configuring Cura

Link your CuraEngine backend by inserting the following lines in $HOME/.config/cura/config.cfg :

[backend]
location = /[path_to_the..]/CuraEngine/build/CuraEngine

Build scripts

Please checkout cura-build

Third party plugins

• Post Processing Plugin: Allows for post-processing scripts to run on g-code.
• Barbarian Plugin: Simple scale tool for imperial to metric.
• X3G Writer: Adds support for exporting X3G files.
• Auto orientation: Calculate the optimal orientation for a model.
• OctoPrint Plugin: Send printjobs directly to OctoPrint and monitor their progress in Cura.
• Electric Print Cost Calculator Plugin: Calculate the electric costs of a print.

Making profiles for other printers

If your make of printer is not in the list of supported printers, and using the "Custom FDM Printer" does not offer enough flexibility, you can use this as a template.

• Change the machine ID to something unique
• Change the machine_name to your printer's name
• If you have a 3D model of your platform you can put it in resources/meshes and put its name under platform
• Set your machine's dimensions with machine_width, machine_depth, and machine_height
• If your printer's origin is in the center of the bed, set machine_center_is_zero to true.
• Set your print head dimensions with the machine_head_shape parameters
• Set the start and end gcode in machine_start_gcode and machine_end_gcode

Once you are done, put the profile you have made into resources/definitions, or in definitions in your cura profile folder.

If you want to make a definition for a multi-extrusion printer, have a look at this as a template, along with the two extruder definitions it references here and here

Translating Cura

If you'd like to contribute a translation of Cura, please first look for any existing translation. If your language is already there in the source code but not in Cura's interface, it may be partially translated.

There are four files that need to be translated for Cura:

1. https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/blob/master/resources/i18n/cura.pot
2. https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/blob/master/resources/i18n/fdmextruder.def.json.pot
3. https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/blob/master/resources/i18n/fdmprinter.def.json.pot (This one is the most work.)
4. https://github.com/Ultimaker/Uranium/blob/master/resources/i18n/uranium.pot

Copy these files and rename them to *.po (remove the t). Then create the actual translations by filling in the empty msgstr entries. These are gettext files, which are plain text so you can open them with any text editor such as Notepad or GEdit, but it is probably easier with a specialised tool such as POEdit or Virtaal.

Do not hestiate to ask us about a translation or the meaning of some text via Github Issues.

Once the translation is complete, it's probably best to test them in Cura. Use your favourite software to convert the .po file to a .mo file (such as GetText). Then put the .mo files in the .../resources/i18n/<language code>/LC_MESSAGES folder in your Cura installation. Then find your Cura configuration file (next to the log as described above, except on Linux where it is located in ~/.config/cura) and change the language preference to the name of the folder you just created. Then start Cura. If working correctly, your Cura should now be translated.

To submit your translation, ideally you would make two pull requests where all *.po files are located in that same <language code> folder in the resources of both the Cura and Uranium repositories. Put cura.po, fdmprinter.def.json.po and fdmextruder.def.json.po in the Cura repository, and put uranium.po in the Uranium repository. Then submit the pull requests to Github. For people with less experience with Git, you can also e-mail the translations to the e-mail address listed at the top of the cura.pot file as the Report-Msgid-Bugs-To entry and we'll make sure it gets checked and included.

After the translation is submitted, the Cura maintainers will check for its completeness and check whether it is consistent. We will take special care to look for common mistakes, such as translating mark-up <message> code and such. We are often not fluent in every language, so we expect the translator and the international users to make corrections where necessary. Of course, there will always be some mistakes in every translation.

When the next Cura release comes around, some of the texts will have changed and some new texts will have been added. Around the time when the beta is released we will invoke a string freeze, meaning that no developer is allowed to make changes to the texts. Then we will update the translation template .pot files and ask all our translators to update their translations. If you are unable to update the translation in time for the actual release, we will remove the language from the drop-down menu in the Preferences window. The translation stays in Cura however, so that someone might pick it up again later and update it with the newest texts. Also, users who had previously selected the language can still continue Cura in their language but English text will appear among the original text.