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Seam painting

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This tool is available from PrusaSlicer version 2.3.

Unless you're printing in the Spiral vase mode, each perimeter loop has to start and end somewhere. Furthermore, the printer has to stop extruding for a brief moment when the print head moves up to the next layer. This start/endpoint creates a potentially visible vertical seam on the side of the object. It's also commonly referred to as zits, layer seams or scars.

You can set the Seam position in the Print Settings to try and hide the seam in a corner, randomize the seam position or align it with the back of the model.

The seam painting tool provides more detailed control over the seam placement. The tool is accessible from the left toolbar and it is only shown in Advanced and Expert modes. After clicking on the icon, the user can paint 'Seam enforcers' or 'Seam blockers' on the model in a similar way to Paint-on supports.

Left-mouse button - Enforce seam 

Right-mouse button - Block seam

Shift + Left-mouse button - Erase selection

Alt + Mousewheel- Change brush size

Seam placement logic

If there is a seam enforcer, it always places seams into the enforcer area.

If there is a blocker, its area is excluded from possible seam candidates.

The Nearest, Rear and Random Seam position options are still respected. When the Aligned option is active and enforcers are used, the seam is placed in the middle of the enforcer area. This allows drawing smooth seams over the model.

If a layer has multiple seam enforcers - WILL BE UPDATED SOON

Cursor type

Spherical cursor (default)

Paints everything inside the sphere regardless of whether it is visible or not from the current view. The preferred method for most cases.

Circular cursor

Paints all visible places inside the circle from the current view, possibly leaving unpainted areas, but never painting behind corners.

Clipping plane

You can use the clipping plane tool to hide a part of the object, so that difficult to reach areas can be easily painted. Move the slider from left to right to move the clipping plane. 

The Reset direction button will align the clipping plane tool parallel to the current camera view. E.g. if you want to have the clipping plane moving up-down, look at the model from the top (Top view 1 ) and hit the Reset direction button. The button appears when you move the slider to any non-zero value.

 

8 comments

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Excalibur2811
It would be nice to see some example diagrams explaining this here..
Same Old Shane
there are links in this article pointing to other ones about seams. Did you check there?https://help.prusa3d.com/en/article/seam-position_151069
Tim Angus
I signed up just to echo the comments regarding being able to paint straight lines. Seems (lolz) like doing this would be the more common case than not, tbh.
David

Hi Tim! The painted line is just an approximate point of where the seam should be located. Anyway, you can report a bug/ request a feature at github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer

Tim Angus
Apparently there already is one https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/5970
EDIT: or, several actually, but they're mostly duped to that one.
David

The problem might be even if you paint a straight line, the seams are not perfectly aligned. By the way for painting a straight line, you can sort of utilize another bug, you start painting a seam and while holding the left mouse button, you hit escape. then you enter the seam painting mode again and just click the end destination.

mchahn
Thanks for the trick!  It works perfectly.  I put the object half off the window and click top and bottom on the very edge.  This makes the line perfectly vertical.
Ramage
Two years later this 'bug' still works.  Thanks for the tip.
Spinnetti
Excellent find... Straight line selection is sorely missing!
DeMelo
Painting the seam is great, being able to draw straight lines in prusaslicer would be even better. But in my opinion the best way to precisely control seam positioning would be by creating a modifier mesh with your favorite modeling software and then importing it to prusaslicer to overlap with the printing model. The intersection lines would define the z-seam path.Cura offers a similar tool, but to control settings other than seam positioning.
Hermes Endakis
You can draw straight lines with your mouse on a Mac using an Accessibility option called 'Mouse Keys' that lets you use your keyboard to move the mouse around the screen. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh27469/mac