How to use supports in S3d

[tmccafferty]

Boy, a little documentation on this product would sure help. The quick start guide explains the obvious features, but I can't find anything on many of the features like controlling the auto support and using the manual support features. The extra words when I hover over a feature usually just says the same thing with a few more words.

Ok, sorry about the rant, I just want to use the features in the marketing video.

Can anyone give me some pointers on using the support features? Especially the manual methods.

[jimc]

click on the model so its highlighted. go under the tools menu and click manually define support for model. there you can add or remove supports

[tmccafferty]

Hmmm, should I feel stupid?...

The KEY is to "select" the model. I only had one model and didn't realize I had to tell it I wanted to add support to the only model on the table. If you don't select the model, it just ignores your requests. That sure would have been easy to put in a brief document or maybe have it respond wit "select a model"

Thanks for your help.... It works great.

[tmccafferty]

Hmmm.... More experimenting and it doesn't seem to matter whether you select.

Geese, I swear I couldn't get it to work before. Now, it seems like a monkey could do it.

Duhhh

[jimc]

haha no sweat. we have all been there. if you have multiple models on the table you will need to select the model you want and define one by one.

[tmccafferty]

You know though, it does seem like they could put some resources to filling in some of the blanks so when you click on a question mark on an open menu, you wouldn't get a red circle with a line through it. I worked in product development for many years and found documentation is always a pain, usually late, and not nearly as much fun as developing new features. It is important though for product acceptance and success.

I used to hire independent tech writers to make it happen. They could do most of it independently and only when necessary, they would briefly interrupt the crack designers to clarify something. They were much more efficient at creating good documentation. It takes different kinds of folks to excel at different type tasks. Usually my most creative developers were the worse at documenting.

[jimc]

I totally agree. I think the one that is on the slic3r website is great but creator has nothing.

[Tshulthise]

I couldn't figure out how to use manual supports either. I'll try it again by "clicking on the model". I won't recommend this software until they include decent documentation. Bells and whistles are nice but not worth $125 vs. free if you can't figure out how to use them.