I've installed the printer software for my LulzBot machine, and I'm now greeted with the configuration wizard upon starting the slicer software for the first time. This process involves loading a basic printer profile. A great feature of LulzBot's edition of Cura is that all their profiles are pre-set. If you were using another version of Cura, you'd find various profiles under the other printers section. Today, I'll be using the LulzBot Mini, a desktop printer beside me, so I'll select it from the menu and choose the standard LulzBot Mini. We're not using the FlexiStuart setup, which is excellent. Upon loading, we enter Cura's basic view. On the left, there's a grey box containing all the settings for the quick print view, which is the model viewer we're currently in. To the right is our print bed visualization, a virtual representation of our print bed, showing what the Cartesian system looks like in 3D on your computer. There are several options available, including a toolbar with all the settings you might need. Initially, we'll go into preferences to set a price, choosing $37 per kilogram of filament. The model colour is set, and languages auto-detect, which is convenient. You can also auto-detect an SD card drive, a feature we haven't discussed much. With your printer, you can connect via a USB tether, as we'll do with the Mini, or use an SD card slot. As long as the SD card is formatted as FAT32, you can plug it in, and Cura will automatically save your G-code file to the SD card, making it quick and easy to print. Always ensure it's checking for updates to run the latest version of Cura.

In the model viewer, you can rotate the view by holding the right click and zoom in and out with the mouse wheel or by holding both mouse buttons and moving the mouse up and down. If nothing happens with the mouse, you need to load a model file. To do this, click the load model button. We'll load STL models since we're in the slicer software. I'll load the Rocktopus print, the first print you'll do with a LulzBot 3D printer. LulzBot prints one of these at the factory on your printer, and when you receive it, you'll print one yourself to ensure everything is in order. After loading it, the slicer takes time to process it, and we instantly receive information about the print. With the current settings in the grey box, it will take 37 minutes to print, using 0.85 meters of filament, which equals about 7 grams. The bottom number represents the price, approximately 25 cents worth of filament at $37 per kilogram. With the model on the bed, we gain access to more settings. Basic actions include left-clicking the model to drag it around the bed, which is helpful if you want to print multiple objects. Right-click rotates the model, while left-click drags it. Additional settings are available, which we'll explore shortly.

Let's examine the material ease of use section. You can drop down to view all filaments, with each filament having a name and corresponding profiles created by LulzBot. This allows you to select without delving into advanced settings. For example, with PLA from PolyLite, you can choose a standard print, taking 37 minutes, a high-speed print, taking 26 minutes, or a high-detail print, which trades off speed for quality and takes an hour and 3 minutes. We'll explore the settings behind these quick print profiles later, but for our first print, we'll stick with a standard print. Two more options are available: printing support structures and brims. Brims are extra layers of material around the base of your model. To illustrate, I'll switch to the view mode and select layers, providing a 2D layer view of our model. This is especially useful for more complex models, though the Rocktopus print is straightforward. The 2D slice view might clarify the concept of 2D slices. We'll examine the bottom layer, called a skirt, which the tool head path follows, purging the filament for consistent extrusion before starting the print. Skirts can be handy, but alternatively, you can print brims, which are additional layers meeting the base of your print, forming a thicker bottom layer. Brims help prevent prints from losing adhesion midway, reducing warping issues. We'll turn brims off for the octopus today. Support structures, on the other hand, are viewed differently. In the overhangs view, we see unsupported parts, like those under the eyeball and eyelid, marked by red dots. These overhangs aren't supported by other material, so support structures can be printed from the bed up to provide support. However, we don't need them for the Rocktopus today. We'll explore the effects of printing small parts without supports later in this chapter.

So that pretty much covers the basics of Cura. What we're going to do now is take a look at model manipulation within Cura.