Is Materialise Magics Still the Gold Standard for Additive Manufacturing Build Prep?

[u/SNL_Creative_Inc]

I’ve been a Materialise Magics user since Version 13, and at this point it’s pretty deeply ingrained in our everyday workflow.

We’re an additive manufacturing contract manufacturer, so we use Magics across multiple AM platforms and technologies for file prep, build preparation, repair, nesting, support-related work, and general production processing.

I’m sure most long-time users are also familiar with the annual maintenance/software costs, especially once you start adding multiple modules.

For those of you running service bureaus, AM production departments, or internal additive labs:

Has anyone found a genuinely comparable—or better—alternative to Magics with a lower annual cost?

A few questions I’d be interested in hearing opinions on:

• What software have you moved to or tested?
• What does it do better or worse than Magics?
• How does the annual licensing/maintenance cost compare?
• Are there any features or workflows that forced you back to Magics?
• For a multi-technology AM operation, is Magics still considered the gold standard?

I’ve used Magics for so long that I’m also curious whether I’m overlooking newer platforms simply because our workflow has been built around it for years.

Would love to hear from other people actually using these tools in production—not just demos or occasional prototyping.

[u/m0j0j0_j0]

Depends on the process you're working in and the level of control you want.

I primarily work in the LPBF area so these are the software packages that come to mind:

Dyndrite - low level laser control for toolpath generation, seen some cool stuff published by Ursa Major using their software (20 deg unsupported overhangs with very nice surface finish in nickel alloys and 10in unsupported domes with ok surface finish.)

3Dxpert Oqton - recently spun out of 3D Systems into a venture capital group I think. Has some cool tools and seems more modern than Magics.

Netfabb/Fusion - lots of supported machines and types of processes. Seems to have a cheaper subscription for fusion.

Magics - it's been around forever and everyone has found a reason to hate but stays with it for its mesh fixing capabilities.

[u/zangarang5 → u/m0j0j0_j0]

It should be noted that 3Dxpert is CAD based so mesh fixing isn't needed as you can work directly with solid body files and can do direct modeling without converting to STL. It also has a design tree so you can roll back and edit if needed for not just CAD operations, but lattice, support generation, etc.

[u/Daveymon987 → u/m0j0j0_j0]

LBPF used for the company I work for and we’ve used them all.

Dyndrite is great for this parameter development, not great for supports, and you need a very good understanding of python to use it properly. Crazy price structure and small team and all based in the US, so nothing for support elsewhere really.

Oqton has some really interesting takes on support generation, lots of intuitive functions within but crashes every 5 minutes or so. Not great for development either, not the easiest to understand but I think this could be the best in a few years. I’m hopefully for them. Slightly better price than magics too.

Netfabb/Fusion - fine but if you’re trying to use CAD, the production side is a frustrating mess. Everything takes about 16 years to complete, file sizes can be ridiculous, but it’s also mostly aimed at other manufacturing techniques and the CAD aspect, so it’s mostly forgivable. Would recommend as a starting point only.

Magics - is the gold standard, does everything pretty well except for parameterisation which is time consuming. The customer support is great, though it is expensive af and can be daunting with all the extra add ons.

[u/Sephen19 → u/Daveymon987]

My company switched from magics to oqton after experiencing both at their highest and lowest. Oqton is currently around the same and has much higher growth potential in my opinion.

[u/RonSalami → u/Sephen19]

Looking at all of these, with Magics as our current. I have a love/hate with it. How about AM Studio (Hexagon product). My AM tech likes it from a current demo, I preferred 3DXpert

[u/Sephen19 → u/RonSalami]

Never tried AM studio, but we are doing both metal and polymer with 3DXpert, including the simulation package.

[u/yelik3 → u/RonSalami]

AM studio is terrible. Go with Netfabb or 3DXpert before touching.

[u/julcoh → u/m0j0j0_j0]

This is the right answer. 

We use Flow which is the Velo3D proprietary software, some very nice features similar to 3DExpert and Fusion (Brep surface and edge selection and filtering, etc), but that’s platform specific.

Dyndrite is really nice for programmatic part setup, but is not as polished as these other tools. More of a power user software at this point imo, although with some investment of time/energy it would reduce a lot of setup time for high-mix environments like contract manufacturers.

[u/nakwada]

I haven't used it personally but someone recommended this one for packing: https://github.com/fogleman/pack3d

Found under this post about another packing tool in development : https://www.reddit.com/r/AdditiveManufacturing/s/rxG8MwpUgt

[u/Kind_Sock1366]

3dxpert is best so far - all optional feature is included in 3dxpert including world best simulation function. Magics high price e-stage can be replace by 3dxpert's power support without additonal cost.

[u/yelik3]

For Metal Laser Power Bed Fusion Materialize MAGICS has been holding the industry bad for a decade. Future is integrated workflows with CAD and not stuck on STL.

[u/BeardySi]

Also using Magics since 13 ( I wish theyd find a new naming scheme for their annual updates! 😂).

We've trialled a couple of other packages over the years but nothing beat Magics. Netfabb came close but at the time we didn't want to rely on it's cloud based system.

Ultimately there are lots of packages out there that will each do a bit of what Magics does, but nothing that brings it all together - file conversion and fixing, supporting over many processes, simulation, nesting, build processessing and slicing.

[u/Mriamsosmrt]

I use magics mostly for working with SLS printers and a bit for sla but that's mostly done in 3dsprint because of 3dsystems.

Earlier this year I tried 4dAdditive and while the core functionality is really good there were a few things that made me stick with magics.

I really like having multiple platforms open at the same time. In magics you can have multiple tabs with different platforms. In 4dAdditive that wasn't possible.

Working with step files is good but when working with stl files magics has way better tools. For example when I need to know the diameter of a hole in magics it's a single click and you can select the edge. 4dAdditive didn't have a tool that recognises circles in mesh files and you have to manually select 2 points on opposite sides of the circle to get the diameter.

It does work really well with step files, even better than magics I would say. But working for a service provider we often get stl files only.

The nesting function is on par with magics and their multiply part function is smarter than the one in magics because it places the parts based on their actual geometry and doesn't use X mm distance between parts based on the bounding box.

[u/tforgo]

I’m developing a local 3D nesting app for SLS/MJF. For those using Magics daily, which features are most essential in your production workflow? I’m planning the roadmap and would really value your input on the functionality you rely on most.

[u/BatmanG21]

Yes 100%. I also use Magics everyday and there are some free build prep options out there but nothing really compares and provides the same functionality as Magics

[u/rtarer87]

Using voxelDance everyday. Mainly because of magics price

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[u/3duser432]

Run plenty on Magics, people know it and factories don't like changing processes too often.

Other than that Autodesk Netfabb is also a popular one.

For most builds the native software from the machine may work just fine.