cura won't lay flat and prints up in the air

[mchahn]

I’m using the latest cura as of 7/4/2016 (I can’t find the version number in the UI). It has worked fine for months with stl output of openscad. Now doing the exact thing I’m having a problem. When I load the objects they appear up in the air where they were in the cad instead of down on the bad. I tried printing one assuming it would print on the bed but it moved the z-axis up in the air and started printing! The Lay Flat object moves them down to the bed but they are tilted at crazy angles. I’d use rotation to manually lay them flat but I don’t know how to tell when they are flat.

Can anyone help me?

[gabriela3d]

@federico3 is this something you can help with? Thanks

[Enza3D]

I had issues with the latest version of Cura over the weekend when I tried to print. Objects came in at odd angles and were impossible to get to sit flat on the build plate. I rolled back to an older version (15.04.4) and the problem went away, so maybe there’s a bug in the newer version that just hasn’t been caught yet?

I only use Cura as a secondary program so it didn’t really bother me that much, but I’d suggest rolling back for the time being and sending an email to Ulitmaker about it.

[mchahn]

> I rolled back to an older version (15.04.4) and the problem went away

I’ll give that a try, thanks. I tried 2.1 but it doesn’t support printrbot yet.

When googling the problem I see that Lay Flat has been troublesome for a long time.

[Enza3D]

No problem!

It does certainly appear that way; hopefully the developers get it worked out soon because otherwise Cura is a great (free) platform for printing.

[mchahn]

I tried going back, version by version, to 15.04.4 and the problem wouldn’t go away. I even found the downloaded installer for my very first install of Cura in April and installed it. Since that version worked until I upgraded I suspected old settings or something were still around in my computer. I’m on a mac and Cura was the first and only thing I ran on it so I just now wiped my disk and I’m installing the OS and Cura from scratch, exactly as I did in April. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to try repetier.

[mchahn]

I reloaded my mac OS from scratch, installed 15.04.4, and still have the same problem.

I went back to an old stl file and that file worked. So it is something with the new stl file that triggers the bug. If anyone wants a copy of the file for debugging cura let me know.

I created the file exactly as I have been creating them for months. I checked everything in openscad and I found no options that affect the stl export.

So I’m screwed and I will have to try repetier now. Bummer.

[mchahn]

This is embarrassing but the problem was user (me) error. I had left on a ruler that was invisible at the scale I was looking at when I output to stl. What threw me was that I saw the same symptoms when googling the problem.

I apologize for wasting your time. I wasted almost a day of my time.

[Enza3D]

Don’t apologize, we’re all victims of our own mistakes sooner or later! I’m glad you figured it out though!