The advanced support system has some nice features and I appreciate the ease of support structure generation, however more control is still needed. When printing a model that has some delicate features there are some areas where you simply don’t want a support to be placed. It would be nice if we could delete individual supports, or reposition them manually.
I strongly agree with this and I hope Form Labs is working on this for the next software update.
It would be valuable to me if I could select specific supports and remove them separately.
It might be that a raft is overkill for all but very large and solid parts.
Is it possible to change the base shape of the support structure to more of a disk shape? This would make the supports stable and possible boolean “add” when the supports are close together? Just an idea to ave some resin for printing cool parts.
It would be valuable to me if I could select specific supports and remove them separately.
It might be that a raft is overkill for all but very large and solid parts.
Is it possible to change the base shape of the support structure to more of a disk shape? This would make the supports stable and possible boolean “add” when the supports are close together? Just an idea to have some resin for printing cool parts.
I would like to see the possibility of defining the fineness of the support structure and also maybe different structures (hexagons, linear etc.) I would like to see some ability to finetune the support structure to make removal in some cases easier and leave less marks on the final print.
@Deepak, The preform software does have the ability to scale the support structure size as well as the size of the contact points. This feature is found in the advanced settings dialogue under the support structure menu. I caution you, however on getting a bit carried away with this ability as a support structure that is too fine will lose the ability to adhere to the part and result in a broken print.
You can also try using the B9 Creator software. I know myself and others who use the Form1 for printing jewellery models have been doing some experimenting. You can open your STL in the Creator software, add customized supports and then export the file as an STL with the new supports. You can bring that model into the Preform software and print with no issues. Monger from Monger Designs turned me on to this.
I’m sure future versions of the software will offer different support options but in the meantime you have to find work arounds specific to your needs.
I am a rhino user, so i’m thinking about experimenting with grasshopper. Anybody written a supports definition yet? one that enables you to place a point on a vertex and shoot a vector in the z axis that stopped when it intersects the mesh again or the build plate, and then generate supports based on these locations would be pretty nice.
Suppose When we add supports of ring in preform…preform creats base along whole of the diametre of ring…and boundries of the base more thik than cntre of the base…thats all of the facts make wastage of the resin.
In preform some feature shuold be add
Below are the points…
1:base thikness should be down to 0.5mm even boundries of the base also.
2:boundries of the base not should be thik than 0.5mm also
3:base only creats where the pillars are builed not beneath of the whole model.
4:pillars angle should move through mouse like in b9c.
5:diameter of pillars should be decrease or change.
6:angle of the touch point of supports should be change.
7:diameter of pillars from base side should be decrease or increase
the features that you ask for are already there, at least the option to manually add or remove single touch points one by one is there. you just have to press the edit button in the support generation panel. (ever since finding this out I never had problems with supports again. Most of the times manual is the way to go.
I agree on the need to be able to remove individual supports on very delicate pieces.
Also the base - it would be nice to be able to ‘drag’ it in various ways. Is it needed for all prints? In some cases the support system seems like it uses rather more resin than would be desirable. Obviously we don’t want uncured resin building up, but in a house I did recently, it sat on a raft of supports but could easily have just sat right on the build platform, with maybe a couple small supports for window ledges etc.