Support Module Reference

Context View Tabs

The support module uses five tabs in the context view to display its options, Analysis, Edit, List, Support Scripts, and View.

Tab	Primer	Additional Notes
Analysis	Primarily consists of the Downskin Analysis. Using sliders and numerical input, the Critical Angle, the Non-critical Angle, and the Minimum Area is defined. The downskin analysis also contains a switch to respect face groups during the cluster detection. (The option is available only when the part has face groups.) Also provides switches that affect on-screen display. For example, you may wish to hide the platform surface, or have supports displayed partly transparent. Note: Transparency requires OpenGL 3.3 capability, otherwise these settings are disabled.	Downskin: Any triangle whose surface is tilted away from the horizontal plane up to a defined angle, including those exactly parallel to the horizontal. Critical Angle: Surfaces tilted up to this angle from the horizontal must be supported. Use this visual aid at your discretion to find surfaces which, on your machine with your given material, absolutely must, and will, receive supports. Non-critical Angle: Surfaces tilted up to this angle from the horizontal will be used to generate the actual outline of the eventual support cluster. Use this to add some padding to the surfaces of critical angle and lower. Any single triangles that happen to still be within the non-critical angle but have otherwise no or only one neighbor within the non-critical angle will be ignored to generate a smoother cluster silhouette. A smoother support silhouette makes removing supports easier. Minimum Area: Areas that would receive supports but are smaller than this threshold will not be supported. Respect CAD face groups: If a cluster spans a single face group only partly, or spans multiple face groups, every section thus created will be treated as if it was a separate cluster.
Edit	Once generated and selected, settings for that particular support entity can be modified.	Use the Sets to manage three spaces for holding custom values for supports. When holding custom values, sets will also be looked up when placing supports manually.
List	Any support structures are listed and can be navigated to here. Additional tools help with viewing them.	If there is a structure (cluster) or a single bar selected and the checkbox Zoom to selection is active, a zoom to the selected support is executed and the Bottom view is selected. The Set clip plane for selection checkbox is helpful when you need to view supports which do not reach the platform plane. When checked, the Z clipping plane and hiding functionality will be adjusted automatically to allow for a more efficient workflow. Hide non-selection displays no support entity other than the selected one. Hide support at platform: Filters the view to only those support entities which do not terminate at the platform. This can be used to edit and remove support created within cavities of models that do not need it.
Support Scripts	Support scripts are at the heart of the support module. They consist of support actions with predefined values. These can be saved and loaded for later use.	DLP and SLM are the two example scripts that come with Netfabb. They cannot be edited. However, you can copy them and edit the copies.
View	Contains settings for manual marking of clusters, the size at which anchors are visualized, a support material estimate at a defined laser size (if applicable), and a switch to toggle the sections of any other part that may be intruding on the space between part and platform bottom	Note that the part to be supported as well as the parts that may be intruding on shadow area are only regarded once, when the support module is loaded for the part for the first time. If you leave the module and change position of any of the parts in question, you will need to remove and load the module again to avoid incorrectly generated supports.

Viewing and Zooming

Three buttons in the toolbar handle focusing the view of the part currently loaded into the active support module. They are, in order:

• Zoom to Part
• Selected Support – This requires a support entity to be selected.
• Zoom to selected area – This switches the mouse pointer into a mode that lets you draw a rectangle in the view. Once the mouse button is let go, Netfabb will zoom and focus to the section that was covered by the rectangle.

Settings

These are found in Main Menu > System > Settings > Support Module.

Colors	Define the colors for a number of UI elements
Number of decimal digits	Adjust this to have the required number of decimal places displayed.
Zoom animation duration	To help with recognizing the orientation of a part after a switch of perspective, the transition to the new perspective is animated. Use this to affect the speed at which the animation runs.
Show cutplanes	When using the clipping planes, or cutting planes, this switch toggles visible, semi-transparent planes at the cuts. When off, only the contours along the clip or cut are highlighted.
Zoom orientation	When switching through support entities in the List tab while Zoom to selection is active, this perspective is used when focusing on the respective support entity.
Mouse action for bar support	When you have chosen Create new bar, the setting here determines whether bar support entities are auto-generated upon single or double click.
Ask on deletion of all support	Toggles whether to ask for confirmation upon choosing to delete any and all existing supports.
Laser diameter for volume calculation	For calculating the amount of material rendered for non-solid supports, this diameter is used as the width of a single-pass toolpath.
Export as part attachment	Set this to No when you do not want to create supports as attachment but rather as separate part.
Respect part environment	When set to No, supports will ignore any part they would intersect on their projection onto the platform surface.