Hi,
I like to handle Arc Velder inside OctoPrint instead using the Cura plugin to have it in a central place. But is Arc Velder compatible with the API the Cura Plugin uses to e.g. directly starts a print uploaded? Perhaps anybody still answered this question...
Cheers,
Nils
I suspect that it will be able to handle that since the same person made both the plugin in Cura for sending files and the ArcWelder plugin that runs inside OctoPrint.
Is FormerLurker and FieldOfView the same person?
oh my bad, yeah different plugins and maintainers.
I am not that smart... To make matters confusing though, I did also create a plugin that runs @FormerLurker's ArcWelder tool from within Cura. But that is just some "glue" between Cura and the command-line ArcWelder.
As the author of both the Cura OctoPrint Connection plugin and the ArcWelder plugin for Cura (NOT of the actual ArcWelder tool itself though, that's a different guy), I recommend running ArcWelder from Cura. That way you benefit from the (probably) much better performance of the computer you use to slice with to process the gcode file.
If you use the ArcWelder plugin on the side of OctoPrint, automatic printing after upload from Cura probably does not work well because a different file than the one that gets uploaded must be printed, and it takes a while before that file is available and ready. If you do the processing from inside Cura, then that is not an issue.
The only reason I can think of to want to use ArcWelder on the OctoPrint side is to always have two files; one arc-welded and one "pure".
During my investigation I find a discussion that mentioned that the OctoPrint Plugin is updated more regular as the Cura plugin as it is not related to major release cycles. But I do not know if that is true. 
The main reason spend thought to change to OctoPrint is that I sometimes forgot to enable Arc Welder so I can centrally en-/disable it. But that is the only reason I started my search. But the update part would be interesting to get the best out of the prints...
That is not true; I can push an update to the Ultimaker Marketplace whenever I want. What is true is that the OctoPrint ArcWelder plugin gets more updates than the ArcWelder command line tools. As far as I know these are not usually updates to the algorithm.
I must admit that I am currently waiting for an update to the ArcWelder command line tool to create a new version of the Cura plugin, which will contain updates and fixes that are already available to the OctoPrint ArcWelder plugin.
Nice to read...perhaps I will simply let it like it is as it works fine (expect that I forgot to enable it from time to time.