OrcaSlicer has hundreds of print settings spread across multiple tabs. The Favorites Panel lets users pin their most-used settings from anywhere in the Process tab by clicking a star icon on any setting row.

Favorited settings appear in a dedicated Favorites tab, accessible by clicking the star icon next to the Process presets dropdown. Settings are organized by category, show their current value, and include a “jump to” link that navigates directly to that setting in its native tab.

To avoid conflicting sources of truth, values cannot be edited directly inside the Favorites panel — changes must be made in the setting’s original location, and the Favorites view reflects them immediately.

OrcaSlicer works exclusively in metric, which creates friction for users more comfortable with imperial measurements. This feature lets users hold Alt to temporarily swap the entire UI between mm and inches without changing any stored values.

While holding Alt, pressing Shift makes the swap permanent — it updates Preferences and AppConfig using the existing unit-change workflow. Currently active in the Plater’s Move and Scale tools, with expansion to the rest of the UI planned.

The Alt-key preview intentionally does not write to preferences — it is a transient display only, implemented via a UnitSystem singleton and a g_unit_alt_held global flag updated from the GLCanvas3D key handler.

Every time you slice in OrcaSlicer, this feature automatically captures a snapshot of the settings used. A scrollable history panel lets you browse past slices, compare the settings diff between any two snapshots, and restore a previous configuration in one click.

Built as a SliceHistoryPanel (wxScrolledWindow) and SliceHistoryManager with JSON persistence via nlohmann/json. Each snapshot includes a per-extruder filament breakdown and a compact diff view that highlights only the settings that changed.

Replaces the static text status bar shown during slicing with a live animated indicator. Each printer state — idle, slicing, printing, paused, filament change, finished, failed, offline — has its own looping animated SVG icon that plays in the status area in real time.

Implemented using wxTimer-driven frame cycling with custom wxAutoBufferedPaintDC rendering. The animated SVG icons are also exported as GIFs for use in documentation and UI previews. Longer status strings are handled with logic to prevent layout overflow.

Replaces the flat sidebar tab buttons with smooth hover, press, ripple, and drain-fill transitions. A full AnimatedButton class handles per-button state with interpolated fill values driven by wxTimer.

A TabManager coordinator class ensures transitions are consistent across tabs — when one activates, others drain their highlight simultaneously. Rendering uses wxAutoBufferedPaintDC and wxGraphicsContext for cross-platform alpha compositing.

Experimental work adding new infill pattern geometry options to OrcaSlicer’s fill engine. The goal is to expand beyond the existing pattern library with patterns optimised for specific use cases — including improved strength-to-weight ratios for structural parts and patterns that work better with flexible filaments.

Currently in the research phase — patterns are being evaluated for toolpath correctness, over-extrusion at path reversals, and compatibility with the existing wall and perimeter pipeline.

A floating animated path preview player for the slice preview screen. A small corner button toggles an ImGui overlay panel with play/pause/scrub controls that animate the toolpath in real time — currently in the research and planning phase.

Two animation modes are planned: XY path mode (traces the nozzle path across a single layer) and layer build-up mode (sweeps upward through layers). Playback will drive GCodeViewer::set_toolpaths_move_range() via a wxTimer tick.

Will be implemented as an ImGui overlay to avoid needing a separate wxFrame OS window, which would cause z-order and focus issues on Windows and macOS.

Adds Space and Shift+Space as keyboard shortcuts to cycle forward and backward through the Move, Rotate, and Scale transform tools without touching the toolbar. This shortcut pattern is common in professional 3D software (Blender, Cinema 4D, etc.) and was previously missing from OrcaSlicer.

Planned implementation in on_key_down in GLCanvas3D.cpp with guards that prevent the shortcut from firing when a wxWidgets text input has focus, avoiding conflicts with typing in fields that use the Space key.

An OrcaSlicer-native version control system for 3MF project files. The History Panel automatically saves full 3MF snapshots of your project at configurable intervals, letting you roll back to any prior state with a single click — like “undo” that persists across sessions.

A dedicated Backup Storage Location menu lets you see where backups are saved, change the folder, open it directly in your file manager, and migrate existing backup files when switching locations.

OrcaSlicer’s accent color (the signature orange used throughout the UI) is currently hardcoded. This feature adds a user-facing color picker in the Preferences menu, allowing the primary UI color to be customized — including both light and dark mode variants — with a reset button to restore the default.

The implementation extends the system color picker dialog to optionally accept a title, exposes a color picker panel in Preferences built from a reusable create_item_color_picker_panel() function (which accepts a vector of label/light-color/dark-color structs), and adds a static bitmap cube swatch button with a reset action.

Future development aims to expose multiple UI color targets, not just the primary accent, and to make the per-color reset buttons consistent across the preferences panel.