Material profiles: what they are, and what they are not
Material profiles: what they are, and what they are not
Material profiles are your reusable filament definitions in SimplyPrint. Each one names a brand and material type, and carries a few details like temperatures, density and cost. They are what you reach for when creating spools, tagging files, calculating cost, and preheating a printer.
This guide explains exactly what a material profile does, the one thing it is commonly mistaken for (your slicer's print temperature), and how to build your library quickly by importing from the Open Filament Database.
Table of contents
- Where to find material profiles
- What a material profile is for
- Generic vs branded profiles
- What each field does
- How material profiles relate to slicing
- The temperature is for preheating
- Creating a material profile
- Importing from the Open Filament Database
- Keeping a profile in sync with the database
- Who can manage material profiles
Where to find material profiles
Open your account settings and go to the Filament tab, then the Material profiles sub-tab. This is where your whole library lives: a searchable, sortable table of every profile, with buttons to add a material, browse and import materials, edit, reorder and delete.
The same material profiles also appear anywhere SimplyPrint asks you to choose a material: when you create a spool, when you tag a file, in the color settings, and in the slicing settings.
What a material profile is for
A material profile ties together everything SimplyPrint needs to know about a kind of filament so you only enter it once. It is used for:
- Creating spools - pick the profile and the new spool inherits its brand, material type, density and cost.
- Tagging files and printers - a file or printer can be tagged with a material so the queue and matching logic know what it needs.
- Cost calculation - the cost per kg and density let SimplyPrint estimate how much filament a print uses and what it costs.
- Preheating - the temperatures are used by the preheat button to warm up the nozzle, bed and chamber.
- Picking a slicer profile - when you slice, your chosen material profile helps the cloud slicer pick a matching filament profile (more on this below).
In short, it is the inventory and organization layer. It is not a slicer setting.
Generic vs branded profiles
There are two kinds of material profile, and the difference matters for matching:
- Generic - a plain material type with no brand, like "PLA", "PETG" or "ABS". Generic profiles match broadly: a generic PLA applies to any brand of PLA.
- Branded - a specific product, like "Bambu Lab PLA Basic" or "Polymaker PolyTerra PLA". Branded profiles carry a display name and link to an exact filament in the database, so they only match that exact material.
Use generic profiles when you do not care which brand you load, and branded profiles when you track filament precisely or want the exact temperatures and colors of a known product.
What each field does
When you add or edit a material profile, you will see these fields:
Field | What it is used for |
|---|---|
Brand and material | Identifies the filament. A "Generic material" checkbox makes it brand-agnostic. |
Display / branded material name | The name shown in the UI, e.g. "Easy-PLA". Branded profiles only. |
Material type | The base type (PLA, ABS, PETG, ...), used for matching and to pull sensible default temperatures. |
Cost | Optional cost per kg, used for cost calculations. |
Density | Used to convert print length into weight, so SimplyPrint can estimate grams used and cost. |
Nozzle temperature (+/- margin) | Used by preheat, and to validate that a sliced file's temperature is within range. |
Bed temperature (+/- margin) | Same, for the heated bed. |
Chamber temperature (+/- margin) | Same, for printers with a heated chamber. Optional. |
The +/- margin next to each temperature is a tolerance. It is used when SimplyPrint checks a sliced file against the loaded material, so a file sliced at 215 °C is still accepted on a profile set to 210 °C with a 10 ° margin.
How material profiles relate to slicing
This is the part people get wrong, so it is worth being precise.
Your print temperature comes from the slicing profile, not the material profile. When the cloud slicer runs, it uses the temperatures, flow and cooling defined in your filament (slicing) profile for the chosen engine. Editing the temperature on a material profile does not change what the slicer outputs.
What the material profile does do at slicing time is help the slicer choose a filament profile. When you slice with a material profile selected, the slicer looks for a matching filament profile (by material type, brand and printer) so you start from a sensible profile rather than a blank one. After that, the slicing profile is in charge of the actual temperatures and settings.
So the relationship is:
- Material profile = which filament this is (tagging, inventory, cost, preheat, and a hint for picking a slicer profile).
- Slicing profile = how to print it (the temperatures and settings the slicer actually uses).
The temperature is for preheating
The temperatures you set on a material profile are what the preheat button uses. When a spool of that material is loaded into a printer and you preheat from the printer's controls (or preheat several printers at once), SimplyPrint fills in the nozzle, bed and chamber targets from the material profile.
That is why it is still worth setting accurate temperatures on your profiles even though they do not drive slicing: it makes one-tap preheating land on the right targets, and it lets SimplyPrint warn you if a sliced file's temperature is outside the profile's range.
Creating a material profile
- Go to Settings > Filament > Material profiles.
- Click Add material.
- To make a brand-agnostic profile, tick Generic material and enter a material type like "PLA". For a branded profile, leave it unticked and pick the brand and product.
- Adjust the temperatures, density and (optionally) cost. Picking a known material type or a database product fills in sensible defaults automatically.
- Click save.
Importing from the Open Filament Database
You do not have to build every profile by hand. SimplyPrint has an importer backed by the Open Filament Database, a community-maintained catalogue of real-world filament brands, products and their settings.
- In Settings > Filament > Material profiles, click Browse materials.
- Search or browse for the brand and product you use.
- Select the materials you want and import them.
The imported profiles arrive complete with the product's name, material type, density and temperatures, so a branded library that would take hours to type is ready in seconds. You can edit any imported profile afterwards.
The Open Filament Database is open and community-driven. If a filament you use is missing or has wrong values, you can contribute corrections, which improves the data for everyone.
Keeping a profile in sync with the database
When a profile is linked to a specific database product, you can tick Keep material auto-updated from the filament database. With this on, SimplyPrint keeps that profile's details in step with the database, so if the manufacturer's recommended temperatures change in the catalogue, your profile follows along. Turn it off if you have customised the values and want them to stay exactly as you set them.
Who can manage material profiles
Material profiles are an account-wide library, shared by everyone in your account. Creating, editing and deleting profiles needs the filament settings permission, which admins have by default. Anyone can use the existing profiles when creating spools or tagging.
Material profiles are available on every plan.
Related articles
- The Filament Manager feature: track, organize and manage your filament inventory
- The Open Filament Database: contributing and using preset data
- The color picker palette: customize the colors you can pick
- Organization slicer settings: account-wide slicing defaults
- Understanding cloud slicing speed
Updated on: 26/06/2026
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