Blog Posts

Reflections and What's Next: Lessons from Building lib3mf-rs

• Steve Scargall
• 3 d printing

Series: Building lib3mf-rs

This post is part of a 5-part series on building a comprehensive 3MF library in Rust:

1. Part 1: My Journey Building a 3MF Native Rust Library from Scratch
2. Part 2: The Library Landscape - Why Build Another One?
3. Part 3: Into the 3MF Specification Wilderness - Reading 1000+ Pages of Specifications
4. Part 4: Design for Developers - Features, Flags, and the CLI
5. Part 5: Reflections and What’s Next - Lessons from Building lib3mf-rs

On February 4th, 2026, lib3mf-rs is a published open-source project with complete specification coverage, available for anyone to use.

Design for Developers: Features, Flags, and the CLI

• Steve Scargall
• 3 d printing

Series: Building lib3mf-rs

This post is part of a 5-part series on building a comprehensive 3MF library in Rust:

1. Part 1: My Journey Building a 3MF Native Rust Library from Scratch
2. Part 2: The Library Landscape - Why Build Another One?
3. Part 3: Into the 3MF Specification Wilderness - Reading 1000+ Pages of Specifications
4. Part 4: Design for Developers - Features, Flags, and the CLI
5. Part 5: Reflections and What’s Next - Lessons from Building lib3mf-rs

Understanding the specifications was one thing. Designing a library that developers would actually want to use? That was another challenge entirely. I’ve worked on many libraries over the years, and I’ve learned a lot about what makes a good library, for example the Persistent Memory Development Kit . The difference is understanding how Rust does things.

Into the 3MF Specification Wilderness: Reading 1000+ Pages of Specifications

• Steve Scargall
• 3 d printing

Series: Building lib3mf-rs

This post is part of a 5-part series on building a comprehensive 3MF library in Rust:

1. Part 1: My Journey Building a 3MF Native Rust Library from Scratch
2. Part 2: The Library Landscape - Why Build Another One?
3. Part 3: Into the 3MF Specification Wilderness - Reading 1000+ Pages of Specifications
4. Part 4: Design for Developers - Features, Flags, and the CLI
5. Part 5: Reflections and What’s Next - Lessons from Building lib3mf-rs

“How hard can it be? It’s just a file format.”

That’s what I thought before I started reading the 3MF specifications. After reading, re-reading, and getting AI to help summarize and dig deeper into the interpretations and understandings, I was ready to begin.

The Library Landscape: Why Build Another One?

• Steve Scargall
• 3 d printing

Series: Building lib3mf-rs

This post is part of a 5-part series on building a comprehensive 3MF library in Rust:

1. Part 1: My Journey Building a 3MF Native Rust Library from Scratch
2. Part 2: The Library Landscape - Why Build Another One?
3. Part 3: Into the 3MF Specification Wilderness - Reading 1000+ Pages of Specifications
4. Part 4: Design for Developers - Features, Flags, and the CLI
5. Part 5: Reflections and What’s Next - Lessons from Building lib3mf-rs

“Why not just use the existing library?”

It’s a fair question. One I asked myself many times during the early days of this project. The 3MF Consortium maintains lib3MF , a comprehensive C++ implementation used by major companies in additive manufacturing. Why build another one?

My Journey Building a 3MF Native Rust Library from Scratch

• Steve Scargall
• 3 d printing

For the past few years, I’ve been getting more and more into 3D printing as a hobbyist. Like everyone, I started with one, a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon, which has now grown to three printers. I find the hobby fascinating as it entangles software, firmware, hardware, physics, and materials science.

As a software engineer, I’m naturally drawn to the software side of things (Slicer and Firmware). But what interests me most, is how the software interacts with the hardware and the materials. How the slicer translates the 3D model into instructions for the printer (G-Code). How the printer executes those instructions. How the materials behave under the printer’s control.

I Added a Feature to OrcaSlicer to Show Travel Distance and Moves

• Steve Scargall
• Orca slicer , 3 d printing

OrcaSlicer is a powerful and popular slicer for 3D printers, known for its rich feature set and active development community. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at a new feature I proposed and implemented that provides more insight into your prints: the display of total travel distance and the number of travel moves. See the feat: Display travel distance and move count in G-code summary for more details.

How to Build OrcaSlicer from Source on macOS 15 Sequoia - A Step-by-Step Guide

• Steve Scargall
• Orca slicer , 3 d printing

Building OrcaSlicer from source on macOS 15 (15.6.1 Sequoia) can be straightforward, but recent changes in macOS, Xcode, and CMake require some extra care. This guide updates the official instructions with important tips and fixes from this GitHub issue to avoid common build issues.

For this article, we will be using this build system:

• Apple MacBook Pro M1 (Apple Silicon)
• macOS 15.6.1 (Sequoia)
• Orca Slicer 2.3.1 from https://github.com/SoftFever/OrcaSlicer

Prerequisites

Before you start, ensure you have the following installed:

How to Build acpidump from Source and use it to Debug Complex CXL and PCI Issues

• Steve Scargall
• Linux , Cxl

This article is a detailed guide on how to build the latest version of the acpidump tool from its source code. While many Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, offer a packaged version of this utility, it’s often outdated. For developers and enthusiasts working with modern hardware features, particularly those related to Compute Express Link (CXL), having the most current version is essential.

Before you begin, it’s important to remove any old, conflicting versions of the tools. If you have previously installed the acpica-tools package from your distribution’s repository, you should remove it to prevent conflicts.