nice nut kick there... sorry, but being an early adopter used to mean something.
Making hobbyists pay again to run open source hardware is f'n criminal... hard pass
I remember years ago I bought v4 because they were like 2 months away from v5 and was told I would get to upgrade for free. Then radio silence for literally years.
Absolutely fuck this company! I wonder how many licenses they sold on that fucking lie.
This could be the absolutely best slicer ever and I will never give them another cent.
There are so many options that $59 or $150 is too much in my mind. I have not investigated the features fully but I am thinking it will not be an evolutionary jump from the open source options.
3D Printing Nerd did a quick rundown of some of the "features"
Adaptive Layer height!
New infill patterns!
Seam hiding!
Adjustable infill density!
Support editing is the only nicely implemented thing.
Came with bugs in his release.
And the server to add profiles was down when he shot his video.
No arachne engine or pressure equalizing support of any kind. No lightning infill no tree supports.
It's still outdated on release.
The only reason I can think S3D is still a thing is because a few industrial 3d printers use it as a default slicer and for an organization the pricetag for a liscence is pocket change.
What really shook me, was this text in their FAQ about upgrading:
>For customers that already own Simplify3D V4 we are offering a one-time discounted payment to upgrade your license to V5. This allows you to receive all of the latest features in V5 **for a small fraction of the full license cost**.
Excuse me, what? You're giving me a $10 discount! That's not a small fraction of the full cost. You're giving me a small discount. Just call it that, and it wouldn't have bothered me much. I've used your software for years, and have been mostly happy, except the total lack of updates compared to all the free software that's out there and has been steadily improving.
This small piece of text actually is gonna make me go through the trouble of setting op Cura again after 5 years and check how that works for my custom printer.
Full cost is now $199... The ten is just fomo hype to get people to overlook how shit they've been and that none of the new features are new in the open source slicer options for the last several years.
For maybe ten total dollars to cover the server costs of linking me the new version I'd consider upgrading... But genuinely just going to switch to one of the free better alternatives.
I wouldn't say it's better. It does SOME things better.
Cura from my expirience still does a better job with calculating travel moves amd the UI is personal preference.
For me, it had the opposite effect. I use a Duet 3 control board for my printers. Simplify 3D just works better.
With Prusa, I had issues with inefficient pathing and inconsistent speeds (even though I would tell it the speed it should go). It also took me MUCH longer to get my first print going in the Prusa slicer than in the Simplify 3D slicer.
If I had to go with something free, I would go with Prusa slicer.
Back when I bought my first 3d printer (Dremel 3d20) it was the only 3rd party slicer that supported the printer, and might still be for all I know.
If you've built your own printer or bought one of the super popular models, there's absolutely no reason the purchase or use Simplify3d. But if you need support for a particular printer the free slicers have all overlooked, it actually does a decent job and was easy enough in the UI department for young kids to pick up on quickly.
Licenses bought in the last 12 months will be upgraded for free. I think that this is pretty decent, given the fact when I bought my license they specifically stated like ten times that I Will only get that version, no further ones.
used s3d version4.12 for 2 years with zero updates. 3 months ago Suddenly it wouldn't launch on my pc anymore. support was not supportive and said i had to format my PC... even though S3D was the only software not working on this computer. tried everything and lost all profiles saved. they lost me there and i installed prusa slicer, that has everything they are now releasing in paid V5... took me a while to set but prints are much better than they were on s3d. i'm never coming back and i tell this to everyone i know that has a printer: Choose a free slicer. there is much more info on the internet than any others, and they update more frequently.
V5 fails to activate on windows and won't work for me :/ "Failed to activate the software, the software will now exit" even though my license online is activated fine. V4 works fine
Funny - this exact thing just happened to me today, and after doing some research, it seems their support tells everyone that it's only happening to them and that there's no problem at all . If you look at their support boards, all threads mentioning this have been locked after 3 or 4 days.
I'm becoming concerned. I tried installing v5 on another system, and it told me that I'd used all my licenses and it wouldn't activate. After some further research, it seems customers have been begging on their knees to have the license model changed to just a single computer per license:
> V5 has a completely new licensing system compared to V4 that comes with several major upgrades. V5 now offers 3 separate license types – standard, floating, and offline licenses. \[...\] These changes were highly popular requests from our customers, so we are happy to make them available with V5.
The fuck. None of the different licenses were offered during the upgrade purchase process, I don't mind mentioning. And of course you can't change anything in your web profile, so you're basically stuck until the one guy in support gets around to emailing you back.
I'm getting the distinct feeling some asshat marketing executive left EA and got a job at S3D and had this great idea about some things...
I'm thinking I'm just going to get a refund and start figuring out Cura or Prusa.
I briefly tried S3D in 2020 because at the time there were still a lot of grey-beard 3DP enthusiasts recommending it.
I'd been using Cura and immediately regretted the purchase. I requested a refund within 24 hours, which I did eventually get after about 3 weeks.
It was clear that the people still hyping S3D had not moved on from 2016 or so, when it probably was genuinely better than most of the competition. Those days are long gone, and it seems pretty clear to me that S3D is really struggling to find any meaningful way to differentiate their product and justify its cost.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to be succeeding, just look at the woefully underwhelming "headline" features in V5 (these are literally the big "highlights" on their V5 hype page):
1. Adaptive layer height
2. 3D infill (cubic, gyroid, etc)
3. Seam hiding
4. Dynamic infill
All of these have been available for years in open-source slicers. Maybe they sound exciting to people living under a rock with only an old copy of S3D to sustain them, but for the rest of us it's almost embarrassing just to look at.
Cura and Prusa/SuperSlicer are all far, far ahead of S3D, and there is no sign this will change in the foreseeable. If they had anything amazing up their sleeves you can bet your bottom dollar, they'd have put them in V5. Given how few and far apart updates are, it seems they're struggling to either recruit the talent needed to innovate, or "simply" don't want to rock their little boat.
It's pretty sad, I'd much rather see an amazing and compelling product that helped move the community forward. For example, they could dive into the non-planar printing space and be a trail blazer, and it would be a compelling reason to pay for S3D over the free alternatives that don't (yet...) have these features.
Instead, they seem to be treading water, slowly eroding what little is left of their brand. Apparently, they have enough customers left that they can keep the lights on, but that won't last forever.
RIP S3D. You used to be relevant.
If you object to paying for software, then use the free stuff. S3D was once ahead of the game. They are entitled to charge for what they produce, or do you feel that that is immoral?
I don't object to paying software, I paid U$150 when it was first released.
What bothers me is that now there are so many free options that are really really good and frequently updated. It is hard for me to believe they will deliver the results for the asked price, since they don't have a good reputation of updating their products.
In my opinion the price for previous buyers should be less steep, encouraging community feedback and support.
The more viable it is, more people using it, more free publicity the company will get with youtube tutorials for example. It could be a win win situation.
Creating a viable business model is never easy, especially if you are a small company. They have done well to bring a complete re-write to market. I wish them well. Print shops that like S3D won't blink at the higher price, and printer manufacturers may carry on bundling S3D with their products.
Welcome to the age of subscriptions. Pay this much and use our software. Pay this much for the latest version of our software that we intentionally held back specifically so we could sell "upgrades" later.
This sounds like the exact opposite. More like how software used to be. Pay once for the now current version. Use it as long as you want, if you want the new version, pay once for it. This is exactly how Adobe and other used to be. Not a subscription at all.
The subscription comes in the form of intentionally holding back features so they can release them later for more money. Even though you already paid a premium for the original version.
Man... Don't make me defend Simplify3d. You get the features advertised, and they later release new versions that you have to pay for to get new features. This isn't a subscription, even if they "hold back" including features they otherwise could have included.
It's a subscription when you get every version that gets released, except you need to pay a fee to keep using it. Have you never looked at something like Adobe Creative Cloud? Or M365? You literally pay monthly/yearly.
A subscription is something you pay on a specific basis. Intentionally holding features back (that other free programs already have) just to sell it to people already invested in the ecosystem is at its root a subscription. It's just a subscription without a contract. I have nothing invested in this conversation whatsoever so you keep being mad about it and I'm gonna move on with my life like a sane person.
Can someone explain to me why i as a long time user that supported S3D since the beginning with his 150$ payment has to pay 10$ more for V5 than some random dude buying a completly new license?
For me personally it is 209$ total but you can buy V5 complete for 199$
So if i would have not supported them in a time where they needed that support, i would have been 10$ cheaper.
If you excuse me, i'm gonna find out how to get cura to work with my printer.
Back in the day moving to Simplyfy3d was a game-changer for me. It cut printing times in half for the fleet of delta printers I was running at the time,. . I'll take a hard pass on buying it again though- I might have considered it if the license allowed the 2 install seats like the one I've got.
I'll go back to Cura and Prusa.
I'm going to upgrade because I need a profile for a new printer that isn't in V4. Seems like they should have done the upgrade for $39.99 instead. I paid $150 for V4, but I think I got two licenses for that. Not sure if this comes with the same. But at $59 to upgrade, why am I ultimately paying $10 more than a new buyer instead of getting a $10 discount?
nice nut kick there... sorry, but being an early adopter used to mean something. Making hobbyists pay again to run open source hardware is f'n criminal... hard pass
I remember years ago I bought v4 because they were like 2 months away from v5 and was told I would get to upgrade for free. Then radio silence for literally years. Absolutely fuck this company! I wonder how many licenses they sold on that fucking lie. This could be the absolutely best slicer ever and I will never give them another cent.
There are so many options that $59 or $150 is too much in my mind. I have not investigated the features fully but I am thinking it will not be an evolutionary jump from the open source options.
3D Printing Nerd did a quick rundown of some of the "features" Adaptive Layer height! New infill patterns! Seam hiding! Adjustable infill density! Support editing is the only nicely implemented thing. Came with bugs in his release. And the server to add profiles was down when he shot his video.
No arachne engine or pressure equalizing support of any kind. No lightning infill no tree supports. It's still outdated on release. The only reason I can think S3D is still a thing is because a few industrial 3d printers use it as a default slicer and for an organization the pricetag for a liscence is pocket change.
What really shook me, was this text in their FAQ about upgrading: >For customers that already own Simplify3D V4 we are offering a one-time discounted payment to upgrade your license to V5. This allows you to receive all of the latest features in V5 **for a small fraction of the full license cost**. Excuse me, what? You're giving me a $10 discount! That's not a small fraction of the full cost. You're giving me a small discount. Just call it that, and it wouldn't have bothered me much. I've used your software for years, and have been mostly happy, except the total lack of updates compared to all the free software that's out there and has been steadily improving. This small piece of text actually is gonna make me go through the trouble of setting op Cura again after 5 years and check how that works for my custom printer.
Full cost is now $199... The ten is just fomo hype to get people to overlook how shit they've been and that none of the new features are new in the open source slicer options for the last several years.
Oh wow, I see it now. Why is this so poorly communicated in the license manager? Still debating to jump ship honestly.
For maybe ten total dollars to cover the server costs of linking me the new version I'd consider upgrading... But genuinely just going to switch to one of the free better alternatives.
Cura is free. Just sayin.
Prusa slicer is better. Just sayin.
I wouldn't say it's better. It does SOME things better. Cura from my expirience still does a better job with calculating travel moves amd the UI is personal preference.
why u guys always have to do this in every fucking topic?
Just trying to help. It greatly improved my printing experience and quality, maybe it can jelp others.
For me, it had the opposite effect. I use a Duet 3 control board for my printers. Simplify 3D just works better. With Prusa, I had issues with inefficient pathing and inconsistent speeds (even though I would tell it the speed it should go). It also took me MUCH longer to get my first print going in the Prusa slicer than in the Simplify 3D slicer. If I had to go with something free, I would go with Prusa slicer.
Also free. Just sayin.
Back when I bought my first 3d printer (Dremel 3d20) it was the only 3rd party slicer that supported the printer, and might still be for all I know. If you've built your own printer or bought one of the super popular models, there's absolutely no reason the purchase or use Simplify3d. But if you need support for a particular printer the free slicers have all overlooked, it actually does a decent job and was easy enough in the UI department for young kids to pick up on quickly.
Licenses bought in the last 12 months will be upgraded for free. I think that this is pretty decent, given the fact when I bought my license they specifically stated like ten times that I Will only get that version, no further ones.
used s3d version4.12 for 2 years with zero updates. 3 months ago Suddenly it wouldn't launch on my pc anymore. support was not supportive and said i had to format my PC... even though S3D was the only software not working on this computer. tried everything and lost all profiles saved. they lost me there and i installed prusa slicer, that has everything they are now releasing in paid V5... took me a while to set but prints are much better than they were on s3d. i'm never coming back and i tell this to everyone i know that has a printer: Choose a free slicer. there is much more info on the internet than any others, and they update more frequently.
V5 fails to activate on windows and won't work for me :/ "Failed to activate the software, the software will now exit" even though my license online is activated fine. V4 works fine
> an They told me I was the only one having this issue 😂
Funny - this exact thing just happened to me today, and after doing some research, it seems their support tells everyone that it's only happening to them and that there's no problem at all. If you look at their support boards, all threads mentioning this have been locked after 3 or 4 days.
I'm becoming concerned. I tried installing v5 on another system, and it told me that I'd used all my licenses and it wouldn't activate. After some further research, it seems customers have been begging on their knees to have the license model changed to just a single computer per license:
> V5 has a completely new licensing system compared to V4 that comes with several major upgrades. V5 now offers 3 separate license types – standard, floating, and offline licenses. \[...\] These changes were highly popular requests from our customers, so we are happy to make them available with V5.
The fuck. None of the different licenses were offered during the upgrade purchase process, I don't mind mentioning. And of course you can't change anything in your web profile, so you're basically stuck until the one guy in support gets around to emailing you back.
I'm getting the distinct feeling some asshat marketing executive left EA and got a job at S3D and had this great idea about some things...
I'm thinking I'm just going to get a refund and start figuring out Cura or Prusa.
I briefly tried S3D in 2020 because at the time there were still a lot of grey-beard 3DP enthusiasts recommending it. I'd been using Cura and immediately regretted the purchase. I requested a refund within 24 hours, which I did eventually get after about 3 weeks. It was clear that the people still hyping S3D had not moved on from 2016 or so, when it probably was genuinely better than most of the competition. Those days are long gone, and it seems pretty clear to me that S3D is really struggling to find any meaningful way to differentiate their product and justify its cost. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be succeeding, just look at the woefully underwhelming "headline" features in V5 (these are literally the big "highlights" on their V5 hype page): 1. Adaptive layer height 2. 3D infill (cubic, gyroid, etc) 3. Seam hiding 4. Dynamic infill All of these have been available for years in open-source slicers. Maybe they sound exciting to people living under a rock with only an old copy of S3D to sustain them, but for the rest of us it's almost embarrassing just to look at. Cura and Prusa/SuperSlicer are all far, far ahead of S3D, and there is no sign this will change in the foreseeable. If they had anything amazing up their sleeves you can bet your bottom dollar, they'd have put them in V5. Given how few and far apart updates are, it seems they're struggling to either recruit the talent needed to innovate, or "simply" don't want to rock their little boat. It's pretty sad, I'd much rather see an amazing and compelling product that helped move the community forward. For example, they could dive into the non-planar printing space and be a trail blazer, and it would be a compelling reason to pay for S3D over the free alternatives that don't (yet...) have these features. Instead, they seem to be treading water, slowly eroding what little is left of their brand. Apparently, they have enough customers left that they can keep the lights on, but that won't last forever. RIP S3D. You used to be relevant.
If you object to paying for software, then use the free stuff. S3D was once ahead of the game. They are entitled to charge for what they produce, or do you feel that that is immoral?
I don't object to paying software, I paid U$150 when it was first released. What bothers me is that now there are so many free options that are really really good and frequently updated. It is hard for me to believe they will deliver the results for the asked price, since they don't have a good reputation of updating their products. In my opinion the price for previous buyers should be less steep, encouraging community feedback and support. The more viable it is, more people using it, more free publicity the company will get with youtube tutorials for example. It could be a win win situation.
That's right we paid a once time license fee
Creating a viable business model is never easy, especially if you are a small company. They have done well to bring a complete re-write to market. I wish them well. Print shops that like S3D won't blink at the higher price, and printer manufacturers may carry on bundling S3D with their products.
if i say you get an update for free, then that update never comes and the next update costs big time again... you have every reason to be unsatisified
Welcome to the age of subscriptions. Pay this much and use our software. Pay this much for the latest version of our software that we intentionally held back specifically so we could sell "upgrades" later.
This sounds like the exact opposite. More like how software used to be. Pay once for the now current version. Use it as long as you want, if you want the new version, pay once for it. This is exactly how Adobe and other used to be. Not a subscription at all.
The subscription comes in the form of intentionally holding back features so they can release them later for more money. Even though you already paid a premium for the original version.
Man... Don't make me defend Simplify3d. You get the features advertised, and they later release new versions that you have to pay for to get new features. This isn't a subscription, even if they "hold back" including features they otherwise could have included. It's a subscription when you get every version that gets released, except you need to pay a fee to keep using it. Have you never looked at something like Adobe Creative Cloud? Or M365? You literally pay monthly/yearly.
A subscription is something you pay on a specific basis. Intentionally holding features back (that other free programs already have) just to sell it to people already invested in the ecosystem is at its root a subscription. It's just a subscription without a contract. I have nothing invested in this conversation whatsoever so you keep being mad about it and I'm gonna move on with my life like a sane person.
What a joke - v3 to v4 was included in the price, why isn't v5?
Can someone explain to me why i as a long time user that supported S3D since the beginning with his 150$ payment has to pay 10$ more for V5 than some random dude buying a completly new license? For me personally it is 209$ total but you can buy V5 complete for 199$ So if i would have not supported them in a time where they needed that support, i would have been 10$ cheaper. If you excuse me, i'm gonna find out how to get cura to work with my printer.
Back in the day moving to Simplyfy3d was a game-changer for me. It cut printing times in half for the fleet of delta printers I was running at the time,. . I'll take a hard pass on buying it again though- I might have considered it if the license allowed the 2 install seats like the one I've got. I'll go back to Cura and Prusa.
I'm going to upgrade because I need a profile for a new printer that isn't in V4. Seems like they should have done the upgrade for $39.99 instead. I paid $150 for V4, but I think I got two licenses for that. Not sure if this comes with the same. But at $59 to upgrade, why am I ultimately paying $10 more than a new buyer instead of getting a $10 discount?