I’ve been hearing about the new version of the popular slicer PrusaSlicer for ages. Today it finally dropped – PrusaSlicer 3 is out. Still an early preview, so plenty of rough edges to polish, but the speed already feels like a real step forward.
This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint on the buttons. The whole slicer got torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. Makes sense – the first commit to Slic3r landed fifteen years ago.
The most obvious change is the completely reworked UI. If you’re used to 2.9.x you’ll need a few minutes to settle in, but the new layout actually speeds up the workflow once you stop hunting for the old buttons.
Speed
The speed gain is noticeable. I sliced the same articulated dragon with the stock profile: 2.9.6 took 24.5 s, the early preview finished in 17.8 s.
Projects, beds and profiles
Modern printers keep adding nozzles, tool heads and materials, so the project and bed handling had to grow up. Each bed can now carry its own full configuration, and you can keep multiple projects open in one window for side-by-side slicing across different machines.
With several projects live at once the slicer keeps continuous autosaves – handy when you don’t want to rebuild everything from scratch after a crash.
Profiles now support multi-tool setups properly: different nozzles, diameters and materials per tool in the same machine profile.
Custom plugins
Missing something? Write your own plugin or check the upcoming plugin marketplace to see if someone already built it.
So, should you try it?
Beyond the fresh UI you get better safety features, improved printer and material support, and noticeably faster slicing. It’s still an early preview, but it’s already usable and worth a test run.
Projects from 2.9.x open fine in 3.0 and should continue to do so in future releases.
Official announcement: https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusaslicer-3-0-preview-built-for-the-future-of-3d-printing_137672/
