So I recently have been spending time chasing minima and it seems there are two issues at play
the minima don’t always display in the graphical area, despite the warning being present
when minima are indeed displayed in red, they are sometimes very hard to spot especially on prints with several models
I think point 1 is the most important, as when minima do appear I can usually spot them even if I have to look for them for a few minutes.
EDIT : I THINK part of the issue with point 1 is that while minima are visible even if hidden my the model, they can still be hidden by the support structures.
For point 2, maybe something in the lines of meshmixer’s auto repair tool would work better (see attached image).
Thanks for the suggestion - I’ve forwarded this to our software team. The local minima detection is a more bold red than the unsupported region highlights, but I could see it being tricky to see behind supports or without explicitly looking for it.
We can see that there is a support warning which wasn’t there when I uploaded the print earlier this afternoon, it only appeared after I re-openned the .form file to take the screenshots… that’s another issue altogether but since I’m encountering it again now… So I have much trouble finding the incriminated are : First red doesn’t absolutely mean the warning will display, and second the parts that are showing red are very faint
I added a bunch of supports to different parts and I can’t find any red anywhere but it’s still showing a warning. Anyway. I will not force a minima warning to demonstrate my point, here’s the area :
We can see it in transparency through the part but it’s really really faint, especially if the minima is near the build plate where there are a whole mess of other geometries around it
However, when we orient the view such that the scaffolding is in the way, the red area is almost invisible. I chased such a small zone for 30min today on this specific print and had trouble finding it because it was so close to the build plate
As I wrote earlier, I thought the minima indication was not visible through the scaffolding but I know realize it is, it’s just extremely faint and unless you already know where it is you wouldn’t be able to find it.
In all these cases (minima faint / almost invisible as well as critically unsupported areas not being visible or distinguishable from the non-critical red areas), I think the pin method of meshmixer would be a great help.
EDIT : I know this kind of print it better planned on a per-part basis. However, I absolutely needed to print all these parts during the weekend, and the BP is so crammed I had to orient the parts in-situ since the only way to make them all fit was to tangle them together. So I didn’t know what else to do than import them all in the same file.
I’ll second the idea of making minima more obvious.
PreForm could show flyouts or let the user step to each problem and move the camera to it, just something to simply locate it. After automated support generation, it seems any remaining problems are generally going to be tiny and so hard to see.
I third the motion. A way to zero in on tiny minima’s would be fantastic. Even if it was just something like a brief sonar ping effect on the screen originating from the minima’s.
