We’re rolling out a beta for PreForm that brings out a whole slew of new features! We’re looking for beta users who’d like to help us test these out and give us feedback:
Breakaway Supports: innovative new support structures that break away effortlessly making it easy to post process even the most complex models. Available for our General Purpose resins (Draft, Gray, Clear, Color) today.
Supports Brush: an advanced tool to help manually place supports quickly and accurately.
Internal Supports Preview: quickly see where internal support touchpoints will start and end.
Downward Shading: easily see the surfaces where supports will be added.
You can download the beta version for Windows here or MacOS here. It will install next to your existing PreForm so you can switch between them easily. (on MacOS, make sure to select “Keep Both” while installing the beta)
If you have feedback, ideas, suggestions, feel free to reply here or DM me.
The brush definitely seems very useful, and it does seem like one is able to add single single support points by clicking rather than clicking and dragging, however I would appreciate the ability to be able to switch between brush and single point mode.
I have encountered a one bug with breakaway supports. Using draft resin, after auto generating supports PreForm detected two instances of unsupported minima. After manually adding support to eliminate this, PF failed to save the touchpoints, regardless of the location.
Is there plans to add breakaway supports to more resins in the future?
@George_Earussi , the Breakaway Supports are only validated for Form 3. The rest of the features should work fine for Form 2.
@dylanwalter1 , are you able to DM me any screenshots? Happy to hop on a call and you can walk me through this. Yes, we plan on adding other resins but I don’t have timelines just yet.
@leonhart88 , I’m sorry about that. I haven’t received your email or your booking invite I’ll DM you now and set up a time.
I don’t use much standard resin but tried the beta yesterday. I found that it needed some effort to get an acceptable support density. However, I have two suggestions that would make Preform more user-friendly.
First would be the ability to populate specific faces or edges with supports, though I realise that Preform cannot select individual faces.
The other would be the ability to place supports on each minima in a selected area.
I’ve been going between the beta and the regular for a couple of weeks. I do like the beta supports better. I hope the new supports brush will not be the only edit brush option. I mean it’s okay but not all the time. I didn’t use its spray function because it was so arbitrary.
My work is tiny so the preset at 4 mm looks huge to me and gets in the way. Especially since if I go out of the editor and come back in, it resets to 4mm. The truly helpful thing about that brush is that when you are going through slices and you’re at a slice where the support circles have disappeared, if you hover over the area with the new supports brush see where the support is. I hope that makes sense.
I can see how this doesn’t necessarily improve small parts significantly.
In my opinion though, the biggest advantage to the new supports brush is when editing supports on large parts - specifically Form 3L parts that would take forever with the old supports editing.
Imagine clicking hundreds of dots to get the supports you want on a full size build plate I’ve been through that way too often and really appreciate the brush and new features
I would like to see the actual support it’ll draw, not just a marker where. This is interesting when supporting models without a raft as depending on location it can either just make a small support or add a bigger structure on the side.
Also as the support is a rectangle it’s interesting to see how exactly it’ll be positioned.
I’ll DM you now and set up a time.
I’ve been through that way too often and really appreciate the brush and new features