Support editor reference

Controls, options, and settings explained

The context view holds most of the controls to work with supports. Additionally, the Settings hold a number of switches for less often used properties.

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Context view tabs

The support editor uses five tabs in the context view to display its options, Analysis, Edit, List, Support scripts, and Process simulation.

The arrangement of some elements has been straightened, and some visuals-related options have been removed and moved to the main menu's View category instead.

Tab	Primer	Additional Notes
Analysis	Cluster detection controls how the downskins, made up of triangle clusters, are detected for viewing and for manual support generation. 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.	Critical Angle: Triangles tilted up to this angle from the horizontal are considered to require support. Use this visual aid at your discretion to find surfaces which must receive supports. Triangles so detected are highlighted in dark red. Non-critical Angle: Triangles tilted up to this angle from the horizontal receive support if they are adjacent to enough other triangles that also require supports. This generates a smoother cluster silhouette. A smoother support silhouette makes removing supports easier. Triangles so detected are highlighted in yellow. The resulting cluster is highlighted with a bright red outline. Minimal area: Detected areas that would receive supports but are smaller in size than this threshold do not get supported. Respect face groups: If a cluster spans a single face group only partly, or spans multiple face groups, every section thus created is treated as if it were a separate cluster. The option is available only when the part actually has face groups. Detection mode: Cluster and edge detection can be quite resource-intensive for highly intricate parts, or may not even be required at all if you fully rely on the detection within scripts. Switch here between the fastest None, the very fast Downskin visualization, and the regular Cluster detection to fit your workflow and part complexity. Analyze automatically: For very complex meshes with many triangles, the cluster detection can take some time. To avoid binding up system resources for recalculation every time a setting is changed, you can turn this off and perform the new analysis at your leisure using the button Analyze downskins.
	Mark cluster manually holds the settings for manually selecting triangles to be supportable clusters	Brush size: Adjusts the brush size for when Mark cluster manually is active Edge threshold: When manually marking clusters, triangles under the brush but beyond a convex edge remain unmarked when its angle is sharper than this threshold. Also applies to flood-filling of surface patches. The edge threshold makes marking large areas with many small perforations much easier. Note: Manual marking and automatic detection cannot be combined. Also, the critical and non-critical angle for manual marking is fixed at 90°.
	Visual settings moved to the View category in the main menu	Show part, Show support, Show platform: Toggle visibility of those elements. Transparent part, Transparent entities: Toggles transparency of these elements
	View displays a volume estimation for support structures currently present	Show environment: Toggles visibility of other parts partly or fully above or beneath the current part. Recalculate: If you changed the arrangement of parts outside the support editor, use this button when you return to test and adjust for changes in parts overlapping each other. If such parts are detected, Show environment is forcibly switched on. Anchor diameter: Adjusts the size of the dots that highlight control and attachment points of supports on part surface and other places *Support volume with <value><unit>* laser size: Uses a value defined in the Settings to estimate the volume of material rendered for the supports currently generated. Caution: For performance reasons, this is only a rough estimate based on surface and thickness and ignores** any enclosed volume. Solid bars are typically used in photoresin processes where the bars themselves are much larger than the pixels or laser spots of the target machine's exposure system. For example, using a laser diameter the size of the actual pixels or laser spot would result in severe underestimation as the bars' volumes are completely ignored. Bars can generate with a significant amount of self-intersections, especially when using solid bars in bouquets. This can lead to overestimation. Should you want to consider the figure estimated here as relevant to your processes, such as in quotes, we recommend to adjust the laser diameter used in the calculation to correct for the targeted additive process and typical support generation parameters.
Edit	Edit the generation settings for the currently selected support entity here, either by adjusting values directly or applying a set.	Use Sets to manage custom values for supports. Sets are also looked up whenever you place supports manually.
List	Any available support elements are listed here, grouped by the clusters they belong to. Selecting support elements here is the same as selecting them in the 3D view. Likewise, their context menus are available here, too. Selecting the cluster node above a support element selects all elements of that cluster. Click the visibility icon to hide or show individual support elements. Use the View > Hide non-selection switch to hide all support elements and show only those you select in the list.	Replay support actions: As you can edit support entities after generating them through various means, you may at some point want to regenerate the support, discarding your manual edits. This button attempts to rerun any still available action. Commands and switches moved to the View category in the main menu 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 perspective 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 supports created within cavities of models that do not need them there.
Support Scripts	Support scripts are at the heart of Netfabb's support generation. They consist of support actions with already defined values. These can be saved and loaded for later use, even exported and imported.	The example scripts that come with Netfabb cannot be edited. However, you can copy them and edit the copies. (Support script dropdown): Select the support script to use New script, More actions, Delete current script: Create a new script from scratch, rename, duplicate, or export the current script or import from file, delete selected script (Action dropdown): Select the support action to add (Script listing): Access individual actions of the script Add: Adds the selected support action to the bottom of the current script Save: Saves any changes made to the current listing to the script Execute: Deletes all current downskin definitions, anchors, and support elements and runs the script with its current values. Caution: By default, this does not ask for confirmation. If you want to see a confirmation prompt, switch Settings > Settings > Support module > Ask on deletion of all support to Yes.
Process simulation	Contains visibility and visualization settings for the display of simulation results.	These print simulation results are generated by using a metal powderbed machine workspace based on material and toolpath selection and sending the generated solution to Autodesk® Simulation Utility for Netfabb® (included in the Ultimate subscription) or Autodesk® Netfabb® Local Simulation as included in the separate product Autodesk® Netfabb® Local Simulation. This tab also includes the controls to optimize lattice support, including a histogram display for bar support elements that compose the optimized support structures.

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Settings

These are located at Settings > Settings > Support Module.

Colors	Set the colors used for things like the platform, mesh, supports, anchors, and down-oriented edges
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. Expects the time in milliseconds.
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	For the command Create new bar, this setting determines whether you need a single or a double-click to place a bar.
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. Some older applications and formats need this as they do not recognize dedicated support structures. For example, attached support is dropped when exporting meshes to STL instead of the modern 3MF. Note: You can always convert support structures regardless how you generated them using the Manage Support command in the Home toolbar, but keep in mind that attaching a mesh that was parametric previously does not restore the parameters how it was generated, so you cannot edit them in the support editor. Caution: The meshes so generated can be, and often are, unsuitable for printing as regular parts where support-specific toolpathing would otherwise accept the technically flawed mesh just fine. Make sure that either you process the support meshes appropriately yourself or that they are inherently treated as supports by your workflow anyway.
Respect part environment	When set to No, the support editor ignores any part other than the one you are currently working on in the support editor even when it would intersect with projected supports of the current part. This also includes no-build zones. Two separate blocks in the build room. One is being worked on in the support editor, the other one (displayed with transparency) is acknowledged by the editor. Note how only a section of the other part is taken into account even though it is actually a full copy of the first (not shown). This is done for performance reasons but may lead to unexpected results like the bar supports to the platform on the far right.
Environment size	Sets the extra space around a part to be checked for other parts. Increase this if you often work with widespread parts closely nested against each other.
Use voxelgrid for walls	Supports near walls can interfere with the same walls. When using the voxel grid approach, the wall detection is improved but the calculation cost increases.
Voxelgrid size, Voxelgrid height	The size of the voxels determines accuracy of wall detection and avoidance but incurs proportional computation costs.
Show Apply behavior dialog	When applying support from the support editor, you are asked with a dialog whether to keep or terminate the support editor entry in the project tree. The dialog contains a checkbox to choose to always use this dialog. After unchecking the box, your last choice is remembered and the dialog no longer appears. With this option, you get the dialog to appear again.
Remove old support before script execution	Typically, a support script is there to generate all required support at once, invalidating and possibly even negatively interfering with existing supports. As such, the default is to delete any existing support before running the script. Setting this switch to No disables the deletion.
Support projection height, Constant height	In some additive processes, parts do not require supports to reach all the way to the platform and be anchored there, they just need a flat base to stand on. This setting effectively simulates a fixed distance of the part to the platform for supporting purposes regardless at what Z height in the buildroom the part actually sits. Switch Support projection height from On to platform to Constant height to enable this function, and use the parameter Constant height to specify this simulated fixed distance.

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