--skip-useless-pick
Suppress the top-view and pick thumbnail renders -- and, for single-object plates in the same slicing run, disable is_label_object_enabled in the plate's 3MF metadata -- for any plate whose object count falls outside the 2-to-64 range where a pick image is actually useful.
Details
When the slicer exports a plate to a .gcode.3mf, it normally renders two auxiliary thumbnail images for each plate: a "top" image (an orthographic top-down view of the plate's objects) and a "pick" image (an object-color-coded version of the same top-down view, used to identify individual objects in the GUI for selection). --skip-useless-pick is a boolean flag, defaulting to false, that suppresses rendering of both images under specific conditions where they serve no practical purpose.
The suppression logic applies independently per plate and triggers when either of two conditions holds: the plate contains one or fewer printable objects, or the plate contains more than 64 printable objects. The first condition reflects that a pick thumbnail only has value when there is more than one object to distinguish between. The second condition avoids the cost of rendering what would be an extremely dense picking image where per-object color identification is impractical anyway. Outside these two ranges -- plates with 2 to 64 objects -- the thumbnails are rendered normally even when the flag is set.
For single-object plates the flag has a secondary effect: it also sets is_label_object_enabled to false in the plate's 3MF structure, disabling the label-object feature for that plate. This secondary effect only applies when slicing is also performed in the same run; in an export-only invocation that does not invoke the slicer, thumbnail suppression still operates on the same count thresholds but is_label_object_enabled is not modified. Both the thumbnail skip and the label-object suppression are computed at export time after slicing completes; the actual G-code toolpaths and print parameters are unaffected.
Examples
--slice 1 --skip-useless-pick \
--export-3mf out.gcode.3mf model.3mfWatch out for
- ▲ The skip condition uses an OR, not AND: thumbnails are omitted for plates with 0-1 objects OR with more than 64 objects. A plate with exactly 2 objects still gets thumbnails even with the flag set.
- ▲ On single-object plates the flag also writes `is_label_object_enabled: false` into the 3MF plate metadata, but only when slicing is performed in the same invocation. In export-only runs (no slice step), the thumbnail suppression still applies but this metadata field is not touched.
- ▲ The flag only applies when exporting to 3MF. It has no effect on other export modes.
Related flags
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