Glossary

Welcome to the CuraEngine Glossary!

You're very welcome to contribute:

• Add your terms (alphabetical order)
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3D Printing Terms

• Coasting: Coasting replaces the last part of an extrusion path by a travel move. This way excess pressure is released from the nozzle, thus decreasing the chance of material leaking from the nozzle while traveling.
• Combing: A movement that tries to avoid crossing walls.
• Extruder train: The feeder, optional Bowden tube, heat zone, hot end and nozzle together.
• Extrusion: In FDM printing, this is applying heated filament to the print, building layers. It is the opposite of retraction (see below).
• Feeder: The motor and gearbox that pushes the filament.
• Heat zone: The zone where the filament is heating up while going towards the nozzle. At the beginning of the heat zone the filament is at room temperature. At the end it is at printing temperature.
• Hot end: The hot metal or ceramic bit containing the nozzle.
• Layer: 3D printing is done in thin layers of material. These layers are 2D shapes which when stacked vertically, form a 3D object.
• Nozzle: The opening where the filament exits the extruder train.
• Retraction: When the printer's material feeder runs backwards for a short amount of time to pull material away from the hot end. This prevents passive oozing/dripping of materials in-between actual printed lines.
• Support: A removable structure that helps to print portions of the model that are insufficiently connected to already deposited material, like steep overhangs or new islands (for FDM based printers).
• Travel: A nozzle movement without extruding any filament.
• Z seams: a.k.a layer seam, blobs, zits, or scarring. It refers to the marks that appear on prints either as a line or scattered around the model.

Cura Engine Terms

• Link: Result of the mechanism to detect if there is any overlap between lines, if there is a link, there is an overlap
• Part: a.k.a island. It is a closed polygon that has no overlap with any other closed polygon in the 2D layer.
• Polygon: A 2D shape created by the intersection of a horizontal plane at a given height "slicing" through a 3D object. Each layer (see above) is comprised of one or more polygons, which form the object's walls (see below).
• Inset: An operation on polygons that produces a smaller polygon whose contour keeps a certain distance from the contour of the original polygon. The polygon may also be a larger polygon if the inset distance is negative. This is used for generating walls, concentric infill, brims, support, and many more features.
• Shell: The top and bottom layers, as well as walls.
• Skin: The top and bottom layers only.
• Wall: The contour of a layer. Typically comprised of inner walls and outer walls. The terms "inner" and "outer" do not refer to the actual shape of the printed object, but rather which side of the wall they are. Inner walls form the surface touching the infill inside the model, and outer walls form the surface touching the air (and support material) outside the model.
• Winding Order: The order of the points forming a polygon (see above). In CuraEngine, if the points around the polygon are in clockwise order, the polygon is considered to be a hole in the layer, whereas if they are in counter-clockwise order, they are considered to be a solid area.