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Section: New Software and Platforms
IceSL
Keyword: Additive manufacturing
Scientific Description: IceSL is the software developed within MFX, that serves as a research platform, a showcase of our research results, a test bed for comparisons and a vector of collaborations with both academic and industry partners. The software is freely available both as a desktop (Windows/Linux) and an online version.
Functional Description: IceSL allows users to model complex shapes through CSG boolean operations. Objects can be directly prepared and sent to a 3d printer for fabrication, without the need to compute an intermediate 3D mesh.
News Of The Year: In 2019, IceSL has been featured in news, exhibitions and fairs as a well-established tool for 3D printing. Additionally, since its inception, IceSL's community has grown significantly together with the number of new features included in it for slicing and modeling.
Regarding new features and additions to the software in 2019, IceSL has gone through many changes, primarily focused on improving the user experience and scalability/stability of algorithms. The most visible change is the complete rework of the slicing parameters GUI, with the addition of category-icons to allow for a quick access to settings. We can also note the upgrade of the renderer to support wide and high resolution screens, and the possibility to choose an experimental renderer (based on HCSG, published last year).
On the slicing front, we added new features, long requested, from the community: ironing, automatic spiralization, selection of different nozzle diameters, minimum time per layer, etc. A new GUI to customize the supports points was also added to help with the generation of supports.
The social community of IceSL has been growing steadily. Our twitter account has around 338 followers, 187 users frequently interacting in its Google forum (respectively, a progress of 69% and 25% since last year). Downloads have increased by 78% from last year (55K downloads total). In addition, Slicecrafter, the online version, has a cumulative of around 15K sliced objects.