I've been playing around with the support material generation and I have a few comments/suggestions:
1) The effect of the "Horizontal Grid Spacing" is far less than intuitive. It changes both the spacing and the width/thickness of the supports in a way that I can't understand.
It would make much more sense to have a grid spacing and a width and thickness settings.
2) The "Support Generation" dialog should always stay on top. As it is, the dialog goes to the background as soon as I bring the main window into focus.
3) There seems to be no way to save a model with support. If I save everything and close the program, all support disappears when the factory file/model is reopened.
This is pretty frustrating after having spent some time placing support material.
4) The support material often doesn't print properly after having manually modified things.
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Simplify3D
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- Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 8:28 pm
Re: Support material
Hey Q*bert, thanks for the comments. You've got some good points here and we'll put some of these things on the todo list.
You can think of the Horizontal Grid Spacing as the resolution of the support pillars that are generated. If you have a very complex model and need many more towers to accurately support it, reduce this setting. If you have a simple model, you can use a larger value. In the end, these pillars are simply a visual representation of where the support material will go. When Creator actually creates the G-Code, nearby support pillars will be joined together creating the area where support is needed. The infill percentage of that area is configured separately in the Support tab of your FFF settings window.
And like I said, your suggestions about being able to save the support structures to the STL or keeping the manual support dialog on top are good ones. We'll try to get those on the list for the next update.
You can think of the Horizontal Grid Spacing as the resolution of the support pillars that are generated. If you have a very complex model and need many more towers to accurately support it, reduce this setting. If you have a simple model, you can use a larger value. In the end, these pillars are simply a visual representation of where the support material will go. When Creator actually creates the G-Code, nearby support pillars will be joined together creating the area where support is needed. The infill percentage of that area is configured separately in the Support tab of your FFF settings window.
And like I said, your suggestions about being able to save the support structures to the STL or keeping the manual support dialog on top are good ones. We'll try to get those on the list for the next update.
