Delivering software to enhance your 3D printing

With the launch of the Ultimaker 3 in 2016, Ultimaker established itself as leader in the professional desktop market. In a new video, co-founder and CTO Siert Wijnia and Senior VP of Product Management Paul Heiden explain the vision behind Ultimaker’s latest software upgrades and how they will enable you to do even more with your Ultimaker 3D printer.

“What we promised with the Ultimaker 3 was to give the market a machine ready for the future, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” explains Paul Heiden.

Our new software releases ensure that your Ultimaker 3D printer continues to get better over time, with the focus of these updates being improving your 3D printing workflow.

So, how do they work? Ultimaker Cura 3.0, the latest version of our free slicing software, comes with a new library of plugins open to applications developed by some of the most widely used professional platforms, like Siemens NX and SolidWorks.

Then on 7 November we launch Cura Connect, a feature built into Ultimaker Cura which makes it easier to manage one or multiple Ultimaker 3 3D printers. Both releases build on the existing capabilities of Ultimaker software and hardware, but use these to open up new opportunities to users.

As Siert Wijnia puts it, “Now we have the Ultimaker 3 connected we can start to build applications with that functionality. With Cura Connect, a group of people can send a print job to a group of printers, and the group of printers will decide on which one the job is executed.”

Whether you’re using a single Ultimaker 3 for rapid prototyping or several for small-scale production, Cura Connect’s flexible, scalable system will help you do more with your hardware.

Paul Heiden sums up how these two releases will bring more value to the Ultimaker ecosystem:

“Software will become a central part of our focus. With a simple firmware download you will get a new, rich set of functionality dedicated for professional office use.

“And that way of using software is making this machine really future proof.”