Many Polar Cloud members, especially students, may have access to exactly one 3D printer. These members never need to think about selecting which 3D printer to print upon. When such a member loads an object to the build plate, and then clicks the build plate “PRINT” button, their printer is always selected: an appropriate slicing profile is used and the print job is submitted to the proper printer.
Other Polar Cloud members may have access to several 3D printers. Such members may choose to select or change the printer for any particular print job via the build plate screen’s printer drop-down menu (at the upper left of the build plate screen).
The Polar Cloud’s normal job submission process is designed to be convenient for such members who never, or seldom, change printer choice.
However, Polar Cloud members with access to larger numbers of 3D printers may prefer to scan through their list of printers seeing more than merely printer name before deciding which printer to use for a print job. In particular, scanning through the printer list in either “TILE” or “LIST” mode allows considering further details such as printer status, printer firmware version, and current printer image (e.g., to see whether its build plate is clear), etc., to aid in deciding which printer to select for a print job. (Indeed, for Polar Cloud members with access to extra large numbers of 3D printers, the build plate printer drop-down menu may not even display all of their accessible printers!) So such members may prefer to select a printer first, from the “TILE” or “LIST” printer list; at that selected printer’s dashboard screen or management screen, click the “BUILD PLATE” button to go to an (empty) build plate screen for the selected printer; and then, finally, select the object(s) to load to the build plate using one of the build plate’s “Load objects from...” buttons. This process takes an extra click or two, but allows choosing the printer at the start, rather than towards the end, of print job creation.
Another use of the “BUILD PLATE” button at the printer dashboard or printer “MANAGE” screen, which is similarly a Polar Cloud expert type of usage, is when a member wishes to manipulate a slicing profile without necessarily loading an object at that moment: perhaps compare slicing profile settings, or create a new, custom slicing profile, etc. Such slicing profile manipulations can, of course, be performed with an object loaded to the build plate – but loading an object takes a (very little) extra time, and having an arbitrary object present on the build plate is unnecessary and irrelevant when a member simply wishes to manipulate slicing profiles.