Ultimaker
Global Travel Optimization Across All Features (Not Just Within Groups)
Is your feature request related to a problem?
Hi Cura team,
First — thanks for building such a powerful, widely used slicer!
I’m working with large-format printers (1.5 m+ build area) and high-volume production. One major bottleneck is non-optimal travel moves: Cura optimizes paths within feature groups (e.g., perimeters, infill), but not across them. This leads to unnecessary long travels between, say, infill and supports—even when a better global sequence exists.
Describe the solution you'd like
Add an option (e.g., “Optimize travel moves globally across all features”) that treats all extrusion segments in a layer as a single pool and finds the sequence minimizing total travel - ignoring feature boundaries.
This would reduce print time (critical at scale) and lower wear on large gantries I understand this is non-trivial, but even a basic TSP-based layer optimizer would help significantly.
Thanks for considering!
- A Cura user & printer manufacturer
Describe alternatives you've considered
have not found any
Affected users and/or printers
all
Additional information & file uploads
No response
This is certainly "non-trivial" and would require a re-write of much of Cura's code. Path planning is a big part of what Cura does.
The features are grouped together because the settings in Cura dictate that is so. Most UM printers are dual extruders (and it is UM that does 99% of the heavy lifting in Cura). I don't work for UltiMaker and I certainly can't speak for them but it would make sense that the effort their people put into the software will focus on UltiMaker printers. I think that a printer manufacturer will see the sense in that. It really makes no sense for UM to optimize the software for a competitor's machines.
If Extruder 0 is being used for walls then all walls should be printed before switching extruders. You wouldn't want to jump from a wall to infill to skin to support as there might be extruder switches for all of them. The printer would spend more time at the Prime Tower (and traveling to and from the Prime Tower) than it would printing.
I suppose that a Gcode file could be torn apart and each layer have the features re-ordered by some sort of "distance criteria". I have no idea how that would be accomplished. You might need to commission a custom piece of software to do that.
