Many of you have likely already downloaded MakerBot Desktop 3.7 as it was released in June. This is just an update for those that haven’t either because they are sticking with an older version they feel is sufficient or that haven’t noticed this latest version of MakerBot Desktop. Desktop 3.7 is a significant upgrade in terms of the ease of accessing the bulk of the settings that many users want to fine-tune when they are printing day-to-day. By simply switching to the custom tab in Settings, you can now control things like how far your raft extends from the print, travel speeds during a variety of printing stages, angle required to generate support and even choose to print infill at a lower resolution than the outer shells. This customization is a great way to get your prints printing how you want while no longer requiring you to edit text files to control these settings.
This new access to the settings makes it very easy to dial in your settings for unique materials such as NinjaFlex because you can create a preset and easily adjust settings as you see the need.
There are a couple downsides we have noticed but they aren’t serious enough to recommend against the upgrade. First off, owners of older printers will notice that the first few layers of the toolpath visualization are missing. This can make it tough to see exactly how your print will look when it starts the first layer but generally isn’t going to be a significant factor. A second thing to remember when using 3.7 is that dual extrusion prints will have some weird default settings when using the Quick settings. This can easily be resolved by sticking to the advanced settings tab when using a dual extrusion printer.
Note some older presets will not properly show the layer height and infill layer height correctly. Creating a new preset may be necessary to make that option available.
Download the latest MakerBot Desktop version here.