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 GIF icon that plays in the status area in real time.

Implemented using wxTimer-driven frame cycling with custom wxAutoBufferedPaintDC rendering. The animated 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.

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, 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.

OrcaSlicer’s Move and Scale tools let you constrain to a single axis by dragging an arrow, or operate on all three axes uniformly. There was no way to operate on exactly two axes at once -something professional 3D software handles via the colored plane squares on the gizmo. This feature adds those plane handles.

Clicking and holding one of the plane squares moves or scales across two axes at once while the third axis stays locked. It is especially useful for scaling a model to a specific footprint without affecting its height, or for sliding an object along a surface without lifting it.

The plane squares follow the same color convention as the axes: red for YZ, green for XZ, blue for XY. The feature can be toggled and tuned from its own Preferences page.

Previewing the sliced toolpath in OrcaSlicer used to mean holding down the arrow keys -no playback control, no speed setting, no way to jump by layer. The Slice Path Preview Player adds a floating player panel to the preview screen with a full playback bar for animating the toolpath.

The playback bar gives you play, pause, and scrub control over the animation, plus per-layer and per-move stepping and a speed setting. You can also move the camera during playback to follow the path from different angles, with its own camera motion settings. The player’s appearance and on-screen position are adjustable from a right-click menu.

An alpha export feature can save the animated preview out as media, so you can share a clip of the print coming together. The export is still in beta, so expect rough edges while it is refined.

Placing an object precisely on the print plate normally requires typing in exact X/Y coordinates. Plate Position Snapping draws tick marks on the plate as you move an object, letting it snap to specific positions -the plate center, center X, center Y, and the plate edges.

As you drag, the relevant snap guides appear directly on the build plate, and the object locks onto a guide when it comes close. This makes it quick to center a part or line it up against an edge without opening a coordinate dialog.

Each snap target can be toggled individually in Preferences, so you can keep just the ones you use and disable the rest.

When arranging multiple copies of a model, you often want to shift one over by exactly its own width or depth -“move this one bounding box to the right.” Quick Position Snap Ticks draws gray tick marks at multiples of the selected object’s bounding box X and Y as you move it, making it easy to line objects up cleanly.

The ticks are spaced at 1x, 2x, 3x (and so on) of the object’s own bounding box, so snapping to one shifts the part by a whole multiple of its footprint. This keeps grids of parts evenly spaced without measuring or typing coordinates.

The snap threshold and behavior are exposed in Preferences so you can tune how strongly the object locks onto each tick.

Frequently used models -test cubes, calibration prints, commonly requested parts -normally require navigating File → Import every time. The User Model Library adds an entry to the right-click menu where you can specify a user models folder, and CrashSlicer loads the models from it for quick access.

Once a folder is set, you can paste in the models you use most and load them straight from the menu, without hunting through a file dialog each time. Adding a new model is as simple as dropping it into the chosen folder.

This is especially useful for makerspaces like CRASH Space where members frequently load common community models -holders, brackets, and adapters -without leaving the slicer workflow.

Replaces OrcaSlicer’s static startup splash with a themed, animated one. Nine designs are included -Circuit, Makerspace, CRASH Space, Synthwave, Cyberpunk, Deep Sea, Retro Gaming, Fantasy, and Techs-alotl -each with its own animated border and backdrop drawn around the logo, version, and loading status.

The theme is chosen from a new dropdown in Preferences, with a live animated preview so you can see each design before picking it. Two extra options round it out: Default (classic) keeps the original static splash, and Match print status theme ties the splash to whichever animated print-status icon theme is active.

On Windows the splash renders on its own thread and window, so it keeps animating smoothly even while the main thread is busy loading profiles and building the UI. macOS and Linux fall back to a stepped animation that advances as startup progresses. Rendering is shared between the live splash and the Preferences preview through a single draw_splash() compositor built on wxGraphicsContext, and the choice persists in AppConfig under app/splash_theme.

An experimental feature that attempts to stack parts along the Z axis, building blockers and support structure to hold each stacked copy up. The goal is to maximize build plate usage by growing upward instead of outward.

Because each stacked copy is printed on top of support rather than directly on the bed, this comes with tradeoffs: print quality is lower and the risk of a failed print is higher. It is best treated as a way to squeeze more parts onto a plate when surface quality is not critical.

This is an Alpha feature. Settings are exposed to make testing easier, but the behavior is still experimental, so use it with caution and expect to iterate on the settings for your specific part.