Miscellaneous

Category vs Printer: What's the difference?

While we were designing this system, we clearly had an objective to make it simple for students to submit prints to the printers that make the most sense for this project. Given the state of our 3D printer farm (several different brands of printers, typically multiples of each model/brand), it made the most sense to group the printers into different categories instead of having the students submit directly to one printer.

A category holds submitted prints, has a minimum role requirement, and shows up on the "Submit Print" page. You can use a category to restrict certain printers to users with a certain role.
A printer holds the name of the printer and the state of the printer. Printers are assigned to a category during the printer creation process.

The Role Hierarchy

• Admin
• Master
• Journeyman
• Apprentice
• student
  All users on account creation are assigned by default the student role. Roles can be changed by administrators.
  With the exception of the admin role, all other roles have the same permissions except for having different category options, which are created by administrators.