Functionally Grading the Slicing Process by Compiling Design Intent into Slicer Projects

Abstract

Functional gradients give designers finer control over part behavior by varying structure, material, or process conditions across an object. Yet functionally graded fabrication is often treated as a problem of grading geometry or material distribution, rather than grading the slicing and fabrication process itself. In material-extrusion printing, many functional effects arise directly from slicer-controlled mechanisms: local toolpath planning, surface treatment, material assignment, color mixing, and printer state can all vary across space. Mainstream FFF slicers already expose these mechanisms as settings, but they require users to reconstruct heterogeneous intent as manually assigned mesh regions in their GUI. This paper presents slicer project compilation: a fully automated workflow that lowers heterogeneous implicit designs into slicer-native \texttt.3mf projects with embedded sub-meshes, settings, recipes, and process-state assignments. The compiler partitions spatial attributes into finite regions, extracts aligned sub-meshes, and serializes those regions into the project dialect required by the target slicer while preserving native toolpath planning, preview, support generation, and printer-profile infrastructure. Our method connects heterogeneous design representations to fully featured slicers, enabling automated and scalable fabrication workflows that retain existing slicer ecosystems. We demonstrate this approach across three classes of slicing and fabrication parameters: settings meshes, virtual extrusion, and color or material halftoning. We also introduce calibrated translation models for temperature responsive foaming TPU and PLA, allowing high-level density and Shore-hardness fields to drive fabrication-ready process fields. Across printed examples, the compiler generates ready-to-slice projects for graded toolpath settings, foaming-filament properties, combined texture and process-state control, and color or material-mixture halftoning, replacing more than 2,500 repetitive manual slicer interactions. Our open-source implementation provides a reusable foundation for functionally graded FFF research and applications built on existing slicer ecosystems.

BibTeX

@article{wade2026gradingslicing,
  title = {Functionally Grading the Slicing Process by Compiling Design Intent into Slicer Projects},
  author = {Wade, Charles and Beck, Devon and MacCurdy, Robert},
  journal = {arXiv Pre-print},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.25326},
}