Only allow support in designated area? (Inverse of support blocker)

[nitro2k01 2]

Support blocker is a useful feature. But is there any way of achieving the opposite of what support blocker does? Ie, forbid supports from being created, except in designated areas?

[Cuq 198]

Yes it's call "custom support". Available in the Marketplace.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Cuq

[nitro2k01 2]

55 minutes ago, Cuq said:

Yes it's call "customer support". Available in the Marketplace.

You mean "custom supports". I was confused at first and thought you suggested to call Cura's support hotline and ask about it...

 

Thank you for the suggestion. However, it doesn't quite do what I want. That plugin creates support everywhere inside the selected area, even where there's no object to support, which is very wasteful for my use case. I want to create support only for geometry that is inside the selected area.

 

I figured out a strategy for what I want to do using support blocker, though. Background: I'm printing the Voronoi Skull from Thingiverse. I wanted to try building support only for the narrow angles closest to the buildplate so the printer doesn't have to print in thin air there, while not having to build towers to the inside of the top part of the skull. However, I somehow didn't consider that I can simply put a big block of support blocker above that area, plus one in the front where I also don't want support. So my solution finally looks like this:

 

 

 

[Cuq 198]

Yes I'm sorry it was indeed the "Custom Support" function.

 

In your case the solution could be to use the "Modify Settings" function . You can specify "No support" for the whole part and in the lower area set the parameter "Generate support" to ON and define your "Support Overhang Angle" as you wish  ?

Edited June 9, 2020 by Cuq

[nitro2k01 2]

Thanks, that's more like it. Not only does this exactly solve the problem, but this is now my new favorite setting in Cura. The ability to change settings for regions like that will surely come in handy in many situations.

[suyashN 0]

On 6/9/2020 at 8:17 PM, Cuq said:

Yes I'm sorry it was indeed the "Custom Support" function.

 

In your case the solution could be to use the "Modify Settings" function . You can specify "No support" for the whole part and in the lower area set the parameter "Generate support" to ON and define your "Support Overhang Angle" as you wish  ?

 

Hi everyone..

I also bumped into similar situation. then I found your solution @Cuq and applied it.. but this cutting mesh setting divides the parent body into two divided on the edge of modifier body.

 

Is there any solution to the original post's issue without any effect on the parent body itself?

 

I am attaching the .3mf cura project file and a few screenshots.

 

Please help!

Thankyou all. 

 

 

CCR10_encosure part_1.3mf

Edited January 1, 2022 by suyashN

[GregValiant 1,250]

I went a slightly different way using two Mesh Modifiers precisely scaled and located, and with both configured as "Print as Support".  My 3mf doesn't seem to want to upload (Unknown Server Error -200) so I'll describe.

Modifier 1 is under the main overhang and is X12, Y10 Z8 in size.  Modifier 2 is under the little box looking area and is X5, Y3 Z8 in size.  The second small modifier was required to keep support from forming in that slot.

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by GregValiant

[suyashN 0]

Firstly, thankyou for that quicky @GregValiant  🙂

 

Yes I tried doing that but can't go that way because:

1. this creates extra unnecessary support out of the final part like exteriors of the circular end and towards back which increases print time and material cost unnecessarily.

 

2. This is only one of the parts I used to describe my issue whereas I have a lot many different shaped parts in the build plate and doing these sort of process for all of them individually will consume a lot of time preparing them.

 

Is there any other way to work around it something like support enforcer (inverse of support blocker) or any other easier and tidy way around ??

 

Please help!

Thankyou

Edited January 1, 2022 by suyashN
Spelling correction

[GregValiant 1,250]

"...I have a lot many different shaped parts in the build plate..."  That would have been good to know.

 

If you have "Generate Support" turned off in Cura you can select that particular part and set the Per Model Setting "Generate Support" to true.  That will make the normal support structure you would expect if that part was alone on the build plate.

For each of the other parts, you would need to customize the support structures individually.  If some parts don't require support, then they would fall under the Global setting.  If some did require support then you would have to address them individually and possibly add support blockers here and there.  That is part of the design process.  There is no "Easy Button" that can anticipate a custom situation.  What you can do is insure that those groups of models that you select for a single print job have enough in common that they print easily as a group rather than each needing wildly different settings that are hard to achieve all at once on the build plate.

[suyashN 0]

Thankyou @GregValiant for the response.

 

But won't you agree having that "easy button" will saved a lot of heckle (as per your description) for a lot of people .

 

What we need is to be able to make an object generate support only wherever it's overlapping with support needing surfaces of other object(s) on the build plate.

This might sound complicated but it's not, just hear me through.

 

I don't see why we can't have probably a button (next to support blocker named "support enforcer or xyz") when :

 

1. Cura with all its awesomeness, already has algorithms which calculates areas that need support (indicated by red in the Prepare section)

 

2. It already has a button called support blocker which if used it removes supports from the areas which are common with the modifier object and the actual part. I mean all the main ingridents are already in place, literally just need to create a inverse of that support blocker command.

 

 

It's all constructive feedback if there not such option yet, however I am still hopeful there must be some some way to get this done without getting into that much repetitive labour given Cura has been been constantly evolving for so for so long by the community.

 

Is there really not a way to do this maybe by pressing a few more than one button 😉

??

Edited January 1, 2022 by suyashN

[suyashN 0]

39 minutes ago, GregValiant said:

 

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by suyashN

[GregValiant 1,250]

There are a couple of other choices for Support Blocker shapes (Cylinders and Tab Anti-Warping) that can be added from the MarketPlace.  I'm thinking that another plugin that could create your "Force Support" shapes might be possible.  This would be a new feature and really needs to be written up over on GitHub.  If you post it there then several people who develop such things would see it and someone might pick it up and run with it.  That goes beyond what I know about Cura and I don't know if it would actually be possible or not.  It starts to involve those settings that can be configured "Per Mesh" and a lot of support settings are:

                    "settable_per_mesh": false,
                    "settable_per_extruder": false

An example would be that you cannot set one model to normal supports and another to tree supports.  I'm sure there was research done before those caveats were added.

Right now, I don't see a way to do it other than the ways that have already been noted.  For myself I know what my printer (Ender 3 Pro) is capable of and I rarely support horizontal holes below about 20mm diameter because I got tired of picking it out.  Much easier to just post-process by running a drill into the hole to size it.  Would it be handy for me to have a setting that would exclude holes below a certain diameter from having support?  Yes it would.  It can't happen though because when Cura slices it can't tell if a hole is a circle because there are no circles, just closed polygons consisting of either more or less facets of variable line length.

And would you really trust a piece of software to make all the different configurations of the various parts exactly correct?  Would you just go ahead and print without checking that the software got it right?  Not if you worked for me.  I was a checker in tool design studios for years.  NOTHING was made until it was checked and counter-checked.

Are you familiar with the saying "There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over."?  I think it applies here.