Better management filament purge settings

[wpegden]

Version

PrusaSlicer-2.2.0-alpha

Operating system type + version

Ubuntu

3D printer brand / version + firmware version (if known)

MK3S+MMU2S

Behavior

A standard part of using the MMU2S effectively is developing and using filament-specific settings---in particular, the purging volumes to use between filaments, which are highly color- and filament-dependent.

Currently, these purging settings are not associated to individual filaments in the filament tab. Instead they are accessed separately in the "purging volumes" button. This means that they are currently only saved in the 3mf file, and only settings for 5 "tools" (instead of an unlimited number of "filaments") can be saved. This means that if a user collects data on effective purging volumes of their various filaments, they cannot store that data in PrusaSlicer for easy reference and use later. Instead they need to store this data in some external system and then use it to copy over purging volumes even though PrusaSlicer is set up to manage other filament settings. (Currently, even just changing the order in which filaments are loaded requires the user to manually change the purging volumes, since they are attached to the tool instead of to the filament).

So I would suggest attaching purging volume data to each filament. The simplest way to start would be to allow just storing the "simplified" purging data on a per-filament basis (unloading / loading volumes). These volumes would be stored on the filament tab and would auto-complete the relevant parts of the purging volumes dialog any time a filament is loaded. Advanced purging settings (volumes attached to pairs of tools) could still be updated the same way they are now.

An better way would be to allow storing both the simplified and advanced purging data on a per-filament basis. Each filament would have simplified unloading/loading settings. It would also be possible to create, for any pair of filaments, two "advanced" purging volumes (to be used in each when switching from one to the other or vice versa). Purging volumes would revert to the simplified versions when no advanced settings for a given pair of filaments are available. This would completely eliminate having to change purging settings, after settings for filaments have been previously set.

Is this a new feature request?
Yes

[rtyr]

Duplicate of #1282. Closing.