Synchronizing 3D Printing Hosts with Dropbox

I use several different macs with Repetier-Host to control my PrintrBot Jr. and I’m tired of having to manually synchronize my Slic3r settings among each of the computers. Dropbox is great system for sharing files among many computer automatically and I’ll show you how to apply it to fix the configuration synchronization problem!

I use Repetier-Host on the Mac. These techniques probably apply elsewhere but my exact method probably won’t. Also, I’ll assume you already have Dropbox installed.

First, decide which computer already contains the settings you want to use and copy the settings folder into your Dropbox folder. You can find the location where Slic3r stores it’s configurations by running it with the debug. I made a special folder in my main Dropbox folder called configs to store it in. After you’ve copied the settings folder into dropbox, make a quick backup, then symlink the old slic3r config location to the dropbox folder. Here’s the commands I used for this in terminal:

$ /Applications/Repetier-Host\ Mac.app/Contents/Resources/\
Slic3r.app/Contents/MacOS/slic3r --debug
wxWidgets version wxWidgets 2.9.3, Wx version 0.9906
Data directory: ~/Library/Application Support/Slic3r
$ cp -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r \
~/Dropbox/configs/Slic3r
$ mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r \
~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r.bak
$ ln -s  ~/Dropbox/configs/Slic3r/ \
~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r

Now — before we move on to the second computer — fire up Repetier-host to make sure that the configuration settings are still good. If they are, move on.

Next, it would be best if both computers had the same Repetier-host version so make sure the second computer has the same version as the first. After that backup the Slic3r configuration and symlink into Dropbox.

$ mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r \
~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r.bak
$ ln -s  ~/Dropbox/configs/Slic3r/ \
~/Library/Application\ Support/Slic3r

Finally, fire up Repetier-Host on the second to make sure that the configuration settings are the same as on the first. If they are, you’re done!

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