The Form 2

In 2015, Formlabs introduced ‘Form 2’, the most advanced desktop stereolithographic 3D printer commercially available. Designed for professional CAD users, Form 2 delivers large, high-resolution 3D prints with spectacular details. Its precision and reliability, combined with the intuitive and connected printing experience it offers position Form 2 in the next wave of 3D printing technology.

For the development of Form 2, Formlabs was looking for a cross-platform desktop user interface system capable of ensuring high=fidelity user interfaces, including easy OpenGL and C++ integration.

The 3D model processing application that runs on desktop platforms, pre-processing 3D meshes and communicating the information to the printer, made extensive use of Qt libraries for application logic. Formlabs also used Qt Quick to create the 2D user interface layered on top of an OpenGL view for visualizing 3D data.

With Qt’s testing libraries simplifying the integration of unit tests into Formlabs’ codebase, the company estimates that it saved 30-40 development hours a year in debugging and test case implementation when compared with using non-Qt technology-based devices. The time that Formlabs saved enabled developers to spend more time improving the user’s interaction with the product, including getting the GUI just right.
 
Watch on-demand: “Building Successful Cross-platform Applications – featuring Formlabs”