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A hundred parts across five printer models

The situation

The farm runs five printer models — P1S, X1C, A1, A1 mini and X2D — and a customer wants 100 brackets. The engineer has done the part of the work that only a human can do: sliced the bracket once per model, so the library holds bracket-p1s.gcode.3mf, bracket-x1c.gcode.3mf and three more, every one of them making six brackets a plate.

The operator used to do the rest by hand: count the free machines of each model, work out "twelve plates on P1S, four on X1C…", and queue each file separately. With a hundred parts and five models that is arithmetic done under pressure, and it goes wrong.

The goal

Say the number once — 100 — and have the whole thing land in the queue: the right file on each model, the count split by what the farm can actually take, and a running total on one page that says how many are done, printing, queued and still to go.

What is involved

Feature Its part
Calculate in the File Manager The wizard: from a selection of sliced files to an order with a plan, without authoring a product by hand.
What to print next — the plan block Picks plates to cover what is still needed, ranked by useful parts per hour; the same block the order page shows.
Alternative files per printer model One plan row, five candidate files — and the split of the row's count between them.
The farm's split proposal The forecast's suggestion of how to divide the row between models, applied with one press.
Auto-queue Takes each queued copy to a free printer of the model its file was sliced for.

Step by step

  1. Tick the five files in the File Manager. The Calculate button appears in the toolbar as soon as the selection contains something sliced.

  2. Step Parts. The wizard lists the files with their plates, and under them one unified list of parts — bracket, once, although five files carry it: object names are canonicalised across files, so bracket, bracket_2 and the clone suffixes a slicer adds are one part. Type the target per part: 100. Give the order a name — Brackets, 100 — or leave the one the wizard suggests.

    If exactly one catalog product already links all five files, the wizard offers Use product “…” instead of creating a one-off one.

  3. Calculate. The wizard creates a product for the job — a one-off that never appears in the catalog — and an order with one line, and the dialog turns into step Plan: the same plan block the order page has.

  4. Read the plan. One row: a plate, Covers: bracket ×6, a count of 17 (six a plate, a hundred wanted — the seventeenth plate makes two spare), time, filament and cost per print, and ready ≈ for the row. Because the five files make the same parts, the row carries a File switch listing all five, each labelled with its printer model.

  5. Split by the farm. Next to the switch the row shows the farm's proposal — by the farm: P1S 8 · X1C 3 · A1 3 · A1 mini 2 · X2D 1 — worked out from how many printers of each model there are and how busy they are. Press Split by the farm and the proposal fills the Split across files form. Edit any number you disagree with; the counts have to add up to 17 or the row refuses to send.

  6. Queue it. × 17 to queue on the row — or the whole plan at once. Every copy becomes an auto-queue item targeted at the model of its file. The wizard says Queued; Open order takes you to the order page, where the figures start moving as prints finish.

    Not ready to queue yet? Keep the order closes the wizard with the order kept; Cancel deletes it.

A kit instead of one part

The same wizard handles a product of several parts. Tick the lamp's files — base, shade, clip — set Units to 20 and fill One unit is: with 1, 1, 2. The plan then covers every part with the fewest plates and the least surplus, and the order counts finished units, the scarcest part deciding.

The lighter road: a batch from the print dialog

Printing one file many times without the wizard? The print dialog's Order field offers New order for this batch once the quantity is two or more, so the batch becomes an order on its own and shows up with the others — printing, queued, remaining — instead of scattering across printer cards.

What BamDude does on its own after that

  • Each copy is routed by its file's model. bracket-p1s copies go to free P1S printers only, bracket-x1c to X1C — the router never sends a file to a model it was not sliced for. Within a model, the next free printer wins; one printer gets at most one new item per tick.
  • Every start still passes the usual gates: filament loaded and mapped, plate-clear confirmation where the printer asks, the staggered-start slot, drying. A copy that cannot start yet waits in that printer's queue with its reason on the row.
  • The order counts from the prints. As archives complete, the line's Printed rises and the plan's Outstanding falls; what is queued is subtracted too, so reopening the plan never asks for prints already on their way.
  • The proposal is a proposal. Nothing about the split is applied until you press the button, and nothing re-splits later by itself unless rebalancing is on.

Pitfalls and what-ifs

The split is a starting point

Once queued, a copy belongs to its file's model — until rebalancing moves it. With Rebalance across printer models on (Settings → Printing → Auto-Queue Routing), the auto-queue moves still-pending copies to idle printers of another model whenever that finishes the row sooner, recalculating plates and counts for that model's bed. With it off, the row's Rebalance button does the same on demand, and a pending row on the auto-queue panel can be moved on its own. Details: Rebalancing across printer models.

  • All five files first. The wizard can only offer the models it has files for; a model with no file simply gets no copies. Prepare every slice before you calculate.
  • Same part, same name. The unified list depends on the object being called the same thing in every file. bracket in one slice and bracket_v2 in another are two parts with two targets — rename in the slicer, or set the stray one's target to 0 and let the other carry the hundred.
  • A file without a recorded model cannot be routed: the auto-queue needs to know what the file was sliced for. Such a plate shows in the plan but a copy of it would wait forever; re-slice with a current slicer.
  • Machine-hours are not a date. The wizard's hour total is the sum of print times; the date is the order page's Ready ≈ — see The customer asks when fifty will be ready.
  • The one-off product lives as long as its order. It is hidden from the catalog and from every picker; delete the order and it goes with it. If the bracket turns out to be a regular, Add to catalogue on the product page promotes it.