PrusaSlicer has its roots in Slic3r, until mid-2019 it was known as “Slic3r Prusa Edition”. Price: $240 to $13,790 (annual subscription) Where can I get it? On the Autodesk website. Suited for Semi-professional users who need 3D slicer software to prepare STL files for 3D printing. Prices aren’t even shown for Simulation on the website. The annual price is $240 for Standard, the Premium version will set you back $4,415, and Ultimate is a whopping $13,790.
As of September 2020, you get a trial for 30 days, where you can check out all the professional features.
As with every other Autodesk software, the pricing model has switched to a subscription. Students can try the software free of charge for three years. What’s great? Netfabb Standard is a true Swiss Army Knife for 3D printing. Netfabb Simulation is specially optimized for metal powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition processes, allowing professionals to run tests to make sure their parts print correctly with features like the ability to minimize and account for warping and shrinking parts. Standard, Premium, and Ultimate are all tools mainly geared for model optimization and preparation for manufacture. Don’t let the “Standard” in the name fool you even the smallest version is actually very powerful 3D printing software. The program has since been split into four products: Netfabb Standard, Netfabb Premium, Netfabb Ultimate, and Netfabb Simulation. This 3D slicer software for 3D printers offers great features that allow you to analyze, repair and edit STL files before you get to the slicing stage.Īutodesk acquired Netfabb in 2015. What started out as freeware developed into a mighty toolkit for handling STL files. Suited for 3D printing beginners and semi-pros If you want to start nitpicking, the print time estimates are sometimes off by around 10 – 20 percent. What’s not so great? There aren’t many reasons why you shouldn’t pick Cura. We found Cura gave us good, but not necessarily excellent, results. The 3D slicer software handles huge STL files moderately fast. The graphical user interface is fast with some workarounds, you can even handle dual material prints. For experts, there are over 200 settings to fiddle with. As a beginner, you’ll just see the most important settings. What’s great? It‘s suited for novices and experts alike.
It allows adding licensed plugins from the Ultimaker Marketplace, adds technical support plus additional security layers for a yearly fee of $300.ĭon’t miss: 2020 Cura Tutorial: Master Cura Slicer Software Settings Ultimaker also forked out Ultimaker Cura Enterprise, which is dedicated to professionals. There are also some interesting things to be found in the experimental section if you’re looking to do some exploring.
Ultimaker continues to update Cura, and also allows users to develop third-party plug-ins, ensuring that this highly popular slicer is always on the cutting edge. It will show a toolpath, printing time, and material estimates. It can be fed STL, 3MF, and OBJ file formats – which the 3D slicer software will also repair if needed. Over the years, Cura even added profiles for competitor 3D printers. As the company has its roots in open source communities, the 3D slicer software came out as a freebie – and it stayed that way ever since. Free, Enterprise Version $300 (annual subscription)Ĭura was developed, hosted, and maintained by 3D printer company Ultimaker and its fervent community of users.