Bars on areas

Provide a custom name to identify the support action at a glance. Particularly helpful when you have the same action multiple times for a staggered approach to supporting parts.

Sets a display color for the support elements generated by this action

Cannot be reverted once changed, only explicitly set to a new color

Search parameters for areas of contiguous triangles requiring supports

See Cluster detection reference

Parametrization of the arrangement of connection points along cluster areas

See Anchors

Forms groups of bars for optional cross-bracing, bunching with a tapering envelope, and generating local baseplates

See Groups

Collect bars into tree-like structures

See Bundle into bouquets

Add bracing bars to the lower end of a support bar

See Root system

Deflect bars to avoid or prefer part-to-part connections

See Project bar

After sprouting from the supported downskin, bars are at most this long, measured along Z, regardless whether they connect to anything at their bottom end.

Generates cross-bracing bars between bars in a group

See Brace

Parametrization for the shape of the bars generated by this action

See Bar support properties

Parametrization for the shape of local baseplates generated for grouped bars

See Support properties Baseplate

Defines the space between two anchor points or bars

Anchors keep a distance from a cluster contour that borders a wall (a concave border).

Anchors keep a distance from a cluster contour that does not border a wall.

Adds a single bar to local minima within a cluster

Places bars in sharp corners first. Helpful to ensure support to corners in case the interval between area or border bars happens to leave them out.

Adds a single row of bar supports to a stretch of supportable area where that stretch would otherwise be too narrow to be eligible under the given, regular contour offset.

Adds the bars to eligible area stretches only if the stretch is at least twice this wide.

Unavailable unless Add bars to medial axis is set to Yes

When set to No, the cluster's contour is left unsupported

When set to No, the cluster's area is left unsupported

Switches between rectangular and hexagonal anchor placement for area-filling bar support

Unavailable unless Rasterize area is set to Yes

On cluster (default): For each individual cluster found and filled by this action, the area-filling pattern of anchors is individually aligned.

Global: The area-filling pattern of anchors across all clusters found and filled by this action are commoned, trading a potentially less fitting alignment for potential benefits during beam path exposure

Even when a downskin cluster spans a greater height range than given by Minimum Z value and Maximum Z value, only those anchors sprout bars that lie within the values specified here.

Bunches at most this many bars into a group. A group of bars may receive braces, may have a local baseplate, and the group as a whole may be tapered.

Controls the taper of a group of bars

• 0 %: No taper at all
• 100 %: all bars in a group converge in a single point

Unavailable while Bars per group is <2 or Number of legs is >0

Adds a local baseplate to a group's contact point or patch on the platform

Unavailable while Number of legs is >0

When active, bars are merged into trunks before reaching their lower end on part or platform.

Defines the maximum diameter of single bouquet structures. Smaller diameters cause creation of more, and smaller, bouquets.

Enforces a minimum distance between the first branch of a bouquet structure and the part.

Sets the limit of branches per bar between the first branch and the part.

Anchor on bar picks one main bar and grows additional bars from it or from other bars that originate on the main bar themselves ("side branching"). Free anchor uses iterative splitting of bars into ever thinner ones to ultimately cover the cluster's entire surface area with supports ("split branching").

Side branching

• The entire bouquet can be shifted at once by moving its singular bottom termination point, and all attached bars adjust "organically".
• Anchors where bars terminate on other bars can only be moved along those bars. This makes editing less destructive, but also somewhat limited.
• All bars have the same diameter regardless how many or few bars terminate in them. This can limit their use where actual load-bearing is a determining factor.

Split branching

• When bars split (or merge), the cross section area is distributed (or combined) accordingly, too.
• Anchors where splits happen can be moved individually in all directions, and the segments between anchors are individual bar entities. This allows more freedom but at the same time requires more attention to positioning.
• Since anchors are independent, they do not move proportionately. All selected anchors move by the same amount and in the same direction.

Side branching (left) and split branching (right). Note how the selected one on the left goes all the way from the part surface to the bottom, and how other beams "sprout" from it, whereas on the right, the branches split evenly.

Ensures that no bar in a bouquet ends up angled further away from the vertical than this threshold even when the parameter height and diameter would permit it. If necessary, the bouquet height is increased beyond Bouquet height, and if this is not enough, a new bouquet is started. If that's not possible either, the bar is projected as an individual one as usual.

• Keep at 0 to not affect grouping
• Actual distinct legs are only generated from values of 2 onwards.
• In the special case of 3, no center leg is generated.

At this height above the platform or the bottom part surface, measured along the center leg, the side legs merge with the main bar.

The legs terminate at a circular contour of this diameter parallel to the build platform. If the bars meet a suitable surface before or beyond this imaginary circle, such as when they terminate on an uneven part surface, the bars are shortened or extended appropriately to maintain the side bar angle.

Controls whether bars that fractionally intersect with the part surface should redirect to properly terminate on the surface or ignore and continue to reach to their regular end point on platform or part.

Controls angling bar support entities to preferably hit or avoid part surface.

Options

• No projection: No part-to-part avoidance is attempted
• To platform: Bars that would hit part surface are angled to hit platform surface instead, if possible.
• To opposite surface: Bars are projected from the downskin to hit any surface, part or platform.
• To selected anchor: Bars are projected from the downskin to preferably hit selected anchors.
  Note: This option can only be used manually by executing the script action from the Scripts listing because the fully automatic execution always deletes and regenerates all anchors freshly.
• To upskin: Bars are projected from the downskin to preferably hit surfaces automatically determined as upskins. These areas are determined with the same angles that are used for determining downskins.
  Tip: To project volumes to manually marked surface areas, generate them first, then choose Upskin projection from their context menu.

When a bar support entity is eligible for angling, Netfabb attempts to angle (up to a specifiable maximum) and pan the bar to terminate it on the desired part or platform surface. If no suitable angle or panning is found, the bar is projected vertically as usual.

To find the final angle of a bar support entity, the surface angles on both ends of the bar are taken into account. Using this percentage value, you adjust the weighting of either surface angle in the calculation of the bar's angle between 0 % (the vertical) and 100 % (the downskin angle).

Arrangement and orientation of the cross-bracing bars given by the capital letters resembling the shape

• None or K, X, or N
• Choice of None deactivates all other Brace parameters

A bar in a group may be linked to up to this many other bars by cross-bracing

Lowest angle against the horizontal for the cross-bracing bars

• 10° to 80°

Adapts or overrides the type of junction that the cross-bracing bars use to transition into the bars they connect between. For example, while the main bar may prescribe a straight connection in Support properties, any connecting bars generated out of bracing could still have straight connections.

• Any: The main bar(s) may have this set to a specific value for any bars attached to it which may inherit or override that shape for their respective connection.
• Straight: No curvature
• Curved: Uses a smooth curve to transition gradually into the vertical bar.

Distance by which the minimum contour formed by the contact points of a group's bars is extended to make the base plate's contour. This is the minimum distance before tapering.

For the Pattern of Point connection net, no offset is generated. Instead this value is used to derive the wall thickness of the point connections, using effectively twice this value.

The base plate's thickness

Applies a taper to the base plate's circumference. Positive angles taper the plate towards the top. Tapering only ever adds onto the contour offset.

• -60° to 60°

A selection of structures applicable to the baseplate

• Solid: No structure at all
• Rectangular: Square holes
• Hexagonal: Hexagonal holes
• Circular: Circular holes
• Column: Circular columns
• Point connection net: Attempts triangulation between the anchors on platform to ensure bars always terminate on solid plate volume without needing to make the entire plate solid

Size of the holes for Rectangular and Hexagonal, measured at right angles between wall surfaces, or outer diameter for Circular and Column, respectively

Rectangular, Hexagonal, Circular, Column only

Thickness of walls between holes, or gap between columns

• Generates open supports for single beam passes when set to 0, closed or solid supports for contour-and-hatch exposure otherwise
• Must be >0 for Circular and Column
• Rectangular, Hexagonal, Circular, Column only

Generates a wall along the perimeter of this thickness

• Generates open supports for single-pass beam exposure when set to 0, closed or solid supports for contour-and-hatch exposure otherwise
• Rectangular, Hexagonal, Circular, Column only
• Ignored when Perimeter wall thickness is >0

Affects triangle resolution of the circular features

A filter to help suppress fragments. Holes are suppressed (filled) if area cannot meet minimum fraction

• Rectangular, Hexagonal, Circular, Column only (ignored for Column)
• Unavailable when Pattern wall thickness is 0

A filter to suppress any polygon stretches shorter along the XY plane than the given value.

• Rectangular, Hexagonal, Circular, Column only (ignored for Column)
• Unavailable when Pattern wall thickness is >0