Custom Supports Plugin

[Link 34]

I see there is now a plugin which offers custom supports in Cura, has anyone tired this ?, seemed to slip under the radar without much fanfare but when its a big thing (if it works) ?

[ahoeben 2,011]

Try it, and you'll know.

 

It is pretty much the same as the Support Blocker, in that it lets you add "cubes" to the model. But these cubes are printed as support. It shares all the quirks of placing Support Blocker cubes. On small parts it is also easy to end up with support material on top of the model (where it will not do any good).

[Link 34]

ah ok, thanks. is it worth enabling ?

 

is there some sort of limitation in Cura which prevents it having pickable supports like the other slicers ?, seems odd Cura leads (for me anyway) in all areas apart from supports, which seem to have been a bit 'hacked' to get something which still isn't that great 

[ahoeben 2,011]

Worth it? It is a few mouseclicks and a restart of Cura. I don’t know how valuable half a minute is for you ?

 

With Cura, supports are created while slicing, by what is called CuraEngine. This separate application runs in the background, and receives models and slicing settings from the main application. It returns gcode and layerdata, but it does not say much in specific about the supports it has created. That makes removing parts of generated support iteratively harder than it may be in other slicers, where gui and slicer may be more integrated.