I think this will ultimately fall into the same category as watching a simukated CAM toolpath before running CNC machining operations- it will catch the more obvious mistakes like unsupported surfaces, but won’t be useful at catching more subtle issues caused by specific idiosyncrasies of the machine or material.
How do you accurately characterize your printer though? No two printers will behave exactly the same.
I think this will ultimately fall into the same category as watching a simukated CAM toolpath before running CNC machining operations- it will catch the more obvious mistakes like unsupported surfaces, but won’t be useful at catching more subtle issues caused by specific idiosyncrasies of the machine or material.
This was my first concern as well… Although I suppose you could do some test prints to collect values to change the simulation.
If I were printing something really big, I’d probably run a sim first even if it were inaccurate, just to see if there is an obvious problem.
I’m not sure this would help new people much though, since you’d have to be very familiar with your printer/printing to use a simulation anyway.