I’ve always hated that it forces you to clear the supports when you change the resin type. I get that support requirements can change with different resins. But for a part where I have very specific locations that I need to supports to be this gets annoying.
My work around is to simply save it as a .form file. I realized that if I save the print file, then start a new document with the correct resin selected, then re-open that .form file in the new layout it doesn’t force me to clear the supports. I hope this helps someone until formlabs makes this option a features.
I like this idea but I believe the reasoning behind this is the support thicknesses are different for each resin / Z stepping. So the supports will have to be recalculated. Maybe having the support points stay constant and having the thicknesses change based upon the resin / layer height. I obviously can be very wrong with why this happens. Someone from FL will need to chime in.
I understand the reason for them changing. But last week I suggestion there be an option to leave the supports. Granted this may not be ideal for the resin you’re trying to use. But I’d like the option to choose for myself. Otherwise I’m replacing all the exact same supports after changing resin.
There are a few reasons why we don’t encourage keeping support structures when changing resin types. The most obvious is point size which is different for most all materials. Different point sizes will change where the support structure are placed. Different materials may also have different needs for how supports are arranged and may have different default densities.
The workaround is something that I’ve used for switching between standard resins, but not something I can encourage from switching between standard and more functional materials. In any case, this is a request our software team is aware of and evaluating. There are a few potential implementations that either make clearing supports optional or slightly modify positioning of existing supports to accommodate different point sizes.