Articles on: Cloud Slicer

Guided slicer for schools: teacher controls and AI allowances

Guided slicer for schools: teacher controls and AI allowances


Pre-release: Guided slicer and its AI assistant are not live yet. This article is available for internal review and may change before release.


Guided slicer can give students a short, repeatable slicing workflow while teachers keep control of the printers, goals, recommendations, model library, and optional AI use. These controls live in the organization's slicing settings and are resolved again on the server for every AI request.


School students always retain the complete local rules-based Guided workflow. Student AI access stays off until the required school privacy approval is active.


Table of contents


Open the Guided policy settings

Open Settings > Slicing and find the Guided slicer policy section. You need the Access & change account slicer settings permission to edit the policy. User-level usage details also require permission to view users.


Policy can be set by rank. This lets a teacher keep one workflow for students while retaining Expert mode and broader controls for teachers or administrators.


Changes are saved as organization policy and returned with the slicer setup. AI endpoints resolve the policy again instead of trusting values supplied by the browser.


Choose who uses Guided mode

Set a rank to Expert mode only when it should not use Guided mode. Use Let people choose when the user can choose between Guided and Expert mode, Guided by default when Guided should open first, or Guided mode only when the rank must remain in Guided mode.


A teacher is not treated as a student simply because the student rank is required to use Guided. Shared Hub sessions are handled conservatively and do not receive a teacher AI exemption.


The ordinary slice permission remains the main access gate. Guided mode does not replace the existing slicer permissions.


Limit print goals and reading level

Choose which print goals are available across the account. A smaller set can match a lesson, such as decorations and strong parts, while removing goals that are not relevant to the class.


The reading-level setting changes the explanation style. It does not grant authority or bypass student controls. A student using adult wording remains subject to the same AI and recheck limits.


Optional print-time or lesson-time guidance can shape recommendations. These are teaching constraints, not a guarantee that a print will finish within a class period.


A teacher can lock material, quality, infill percentage, supports, orientation, fit-only scaling, and adhesion. The editor uses materials found in the account's profiles rather than assuming every account prints PLA.


Locked rows appear in Check as Your teacher chose this. They remain selected when a student declines other recommendations and are applied as organization policy rather than through the student's ordinary change permission.


Only lock a value that the class printers and active engines support. Guided slicer blocks an unavailable required value instead of silently skipping it or claiming a substituted value came from the teacher.


Control AI and written instructions

AI can be enabled or disabled per rank. Written instructions have a separate control, so an organization can allow the fixed print-goal choices without allowing students to send their own text.


When enabled, the Guided AI check sends six labelled model views and a minimized set of measurements, printer limits, allowed profile traits, goal, and policy values. It does not send the user's name, account name, original filename, file content, account profile names, or internal file identifiers.


Student AI remains unavailable while the school zero-data-retention approval is pending or disabled. The UI shows a specific privacy-status message and continues with the local check.


Set allowances and recheck limits

AI slicer assists are a consumable allowance. The displayed account allowance can come from the plan, a purchased amount, or a trial cap. Rank, user, and workgroup caps are enforced separately when a request is submitted.


Set a student recheck limit to prevent repeated AI requests for the same model. The server keys this limit to the account, user, and model content rather than the uploaded file's ID, so uploading the same bytes again does not reset it.


The usage table shows current-period net usage by user when the viewer has permission to see users. Refunds from failed requests are not counted as successful usage.


Choose Starter Library access

Turn the Starter Library on or off across the account and choose the permitted collections. The Guided picker can filter available items by category, age band, and size while showing creator and licence attribution.


The library model is downloaded directly from the allowlisted SimplyPrint CDN and its SHA-256 checksum is verified before the precomputed print report is trusted. If the plate contains another model, Guided slicer runs a fresh combined analysis instead of using single-model library measurements.


Use the library to provide known classroom starting points, but still ask students to review the Check result for the selected printer and size.


Understand permissions and Expert mode

Guided policy and slicer permissions work together. The policy determines the Guided experience and trusted teacher locks. Existing permissions still control whether a user can switch printer, engine, profiles, ordinary settings, or use advanced tools.


For fine-grained Expert-mode controls, configure the rank's enabled or disabled slicer-setting list. Per-setting restrictions are organization policy, not a plan feature that unlocks different groups of slicer settings.


Keep teachers able to use Expert mode when they need to inspect or repair a student setup. A required student rank cannot enter the full slicer from the Guided header.


Updated on: 25/08/2026

Was this article helpful?

Share your feedback

Cancel

Thank you!