Recently, I laid out multiple parts manually and then generated supports, and I realized after printing that the parts had been slightly shifted by the support generation process, leading to collision between two parts.
No warning was issued whatsoever.
Of course, now that I am aware of this, I double check my parts after support generation, but I feel that Preform should feature collision detection nonetheless.
Concordo !!!
Thanks for the suggestion! Generating supports does sometimes shift models a bit to accommodate the rafts and I’ve run into collisions a few times myself. I’ll forward this to our Software Team so that we can look into implementing better detection for intersecting parts.
Using Layout -> Layout All with remove any collisions, but it can put parts outside the build area, so some manual moving is necessary.
It is not usually a problem if rafts touch and they print as one unit.
You can overlap bases without issue (other than they may be a little harder to scrape off the build platform. I routinely overlap bases when trying to squeeze a maximum of parts on the build plate. And once or twice I’ve even tangled some supports along with the bases. Never had a problem doing this.
Here’s how I get around that problem.
Agreed. I’d add to this feature request to detect the collision of their SUPPORTS too, or to make the supports smarter to accommodate models that tower over each other (i.e. there’s some vertical line of sight overlap). For example I’ll have supports from one model going through another part as if I added a 1mm thick pole (and its child poles!) to impale my second model. It doesn’t make snipping easy later on since it’s a flush 1mm connection, often with added branches that sometimes align to create a 1mm X 10mm flush connection with my second model. This can force me to damage models when snipping them apart.
I’ve had this issue a few times as well and it’s something we’re keeping in mind while considering methods of implementing better collision detection. If you find that your parts are intersecting, I might recommend cutting the support beams prior to post-curing your parts as it can make things more brittle.
You could have an option to mirror the piece!
Live in 2.13.0! I’ve gotten a lot of use out of this coupled with the improved auto-layout tool and let us know what you think!