101 things...

101 things about Cura (but you might have never noticed)

1. It warns you when you try to set the speed to high, not just by a max speed, but by a maximum amount of volume extrusion.
2. The X Ray vision feature allows you to spot holes and stray faces in the model
3. After slicing it shows red lines in the models where there are possible slicing errors
4. "Simple mode" actually never changes some settings, and uses whatever was filled into normal mode. These settings include retraction, and machine center.
5. You can configure the price of your filament in the preferences to get a cost estimate before printing.
6. Most of the expert settings where added at user request.
7. Cura never changes the model file, unlike ReplicatorG, which saves scale/rotation changes back to your STL file.
8. In simple mode, selecting ABS will enable the raft and disable the skirt. While PLA has a skirt and no raft.
9. The print interface runs in a separate process, even if you manage to crash the main Cura interface, your print will continue.
10. Cura adds a few extra comments lines in the final GCode, this makes post-processing easier. And possible for humans.
11. The bottom layer speed does not only affect the first layer, but also the next few layers with a full infill. Full speed is achieved when reaching the first layer with a sparse infill.
12. There are 260 settings in the "Craft" part of Skeinforge, even before Cura added a few more settings. Cura currently has 52 settings. Of which less then half are often adjusted. And most people only need to adjust 2 or 3.
13. While Cura's special brand of Skeinforge is the default Slicing backend, it was possible to select Slic3r as backend. However, while Slic3r is faster in some cases, it also lacks features and is not as stable as Skeinforge.
14. You can save and share profiles with the "File->save profile" option. These are simple INI files, and are compatible with any version of Cura.
15. You can save the used profile next to your GCode file, by enabling "save profile on slice" in the preferences.
16. The brown model color is not configurable, and created by pure chance.
17. The firmware supplied for the Ultimaker is build with BuildMeMarlin: http://daid.mine.nu/~daid/marlin_build/
18. Skeinforge has almost everything in ratios. Cura only has a few settings in ratios, and those are all in the expert settings.
19. The "replace.csv" can be used to add extra commands for every layer, by replacing the layer comments. Put ";LAYER:[TAB]M999[TAB];LAYER:" will put an M999 at the start of each layer.
20. The temperature is set even before your start code by means of an M109 command. But if you set the temperate to 0 this command will not be added, and you are expected to heat up yourself before printing.
21. You can run multiple slices at the same time, with different settings on different models. After starting a slice, changing the settings will not affect that slice.
22. Cura centers the 3D view around the center of the model. ReplicatorG seems to center around some random point in space.
23. Cura only supports STL at the moment. While the slicers support a few more file formats, the common (99%) usage is STL. To minimize file problems, only STL files are supported. (AMF will be supported in the future for multi-color printing)
24. Cura is bundled with PrintRun, because PrintRun is known to be stable and has a good feature set. The goal is to provide a complete package. Which has to contain a printing interface, the current Cura printing interface is not as rich as PrintRun.
25. The Cura printing interface was introduced in RC1, and contained a critical bug, where it could halt printing for a while when it was updating the 3D preview. This is fixed in RC2.
26. The Joris setting requires a lot of proper configuration to get good water-tight cups. And it's recommended you use the Simple mode "Thin walled cup or vase" setting to use it.
27. Anti-aliasing 3D preview has been requested, but after investigation it was difficult to support it on all platforms.
28. Many (if not all?) Cura features where suggested by Ultimaker community members.
29. The thicker first layer (in the advanced tab), was suggested and initially thought to be unneeded by Daid. After testing he found out he was very wrong. And now the feature is enabled by default.
30. One of the philosophies behind Cura is "human imaginable", the setting needs to be imaginable by a human. So we understand measurements (mm, mm/s), and not ratios.
31. The scale setting is the only value which is not in percentage, but in a ratio. Stupid right?
32. You can use formulas as values. (0.1*5/100)*3 is actually a valid interpreted layer height. This can be useful to calculate mm->inch scales for example.
33. You can use any of the settings found in Cura in the start/end GCode as tags. Check a profile ini for all the tag names.
34. If you use the {print_temperature} tag in the start code. Then Cura will not add an M109 at the start of the GCode. If you do at the print_temperature tag, then it will omit that M-Code and assume you've set the temperature yourself in the start code.
35. If for some reason you need the default settings back, then deleting the "current_profile.ini" from the installation directory will reset all cura settings to defaults. Except for the "steps_per_E" which is stored in the preferences.
36. The project planner is only accessible from the normal view. Not from simple mode. The rationale behind this is that users start out with simple mode. Once they understand their machine a bit better, they switch to normal mode to get more control. And finally use the project planner once they really understand their machine and want to get the most out of it.