Supports: automatic, then by hand

Before you start

Have a model on the plate, oriented the way you want to print it and, if it’s large, already hollowed with its drain holes (Hollowing and drain holes). A support’s column lands where the model stands, so tilt and move first.

Everything below is in the inspector’s Supports section. The values quoted are what the app ships with. They are starting points for one printer and one resin, so your printer’s and resin maker’s instructions come first.

Lift the model off the plate

Press Lift models 2.0 mm (the number is the profile’s Model lift). It stands every visible model that far clear of the plate. Supports need room under the part, and Generate supports does not lift for you.

Choose a profile

Under Profile, the drop-down offers Light, Medium and Heavy. A new plate starts on Medium. Change any field and the name shows “(edited)”, with a Save as a profile button.

	Light	Medium	Heavy
Meant for	small, well-anchored parts	everyday	heavy parts, large flat overhangs
Tip	cone, 0.5 mm	cone, 0.8 mm	sphere, 1.0 mm
Pillar diameter	0.9 mm	1.2 mm	1.5 mm
Overhang	55 deg	45 deg	35 deg
Density	0.6	1.0	2.5
Cross bracing	on	off	on

“Meant for” is each profile’s own description. Heavy trades scars for grip: its tip sinks 0.6 mm into the model (the Bite field), Medium’s 0.4 mm.

Generate supports

Press Generate supports. A progress bar and Cancel replace the button while it runs. Encrust slices each visible model at your layer height and looks at the cells each layer covers that the layer below did not. It holds two things: an island (a new piece touching nothing below) and an overhang past the Overhang angle. It does not read face angles. What matters is area that appears from nowhere, so a face lying on the plate needs nothing.

When it finishes, the On the plate block shows two counts. Supports is how many were placed, Standing how many have room to stand. If they differ, a hint says some supports have no room and are not printed.

A second run only adds. Supports already there stay where they are.

Three settings in the Automatic fold change the result:

• Overhang: lower is stricter. At 45 deg, a wall may lean sideways as far as it rises before it needs holding. Heavy’s 35 deg holds more than Light’s 55 deg.
• Density: a count over an area. 2 puts down twice as many supports, not twice the spacing. The range is 0.1 to 4.
• Contact spacing: 4 mm in all three profiles, before density scales it. A wider tip does not thin the lattice, but it does swallow bigger ledges.

Merge, brace or raft

Tips close together merge into shared trunks, so fewer reach the plate. The Branching fold sets how far a strut may lean (Branch angle, 45 deg on Medium), how far apart tips may be and still merge (Merge within, 8 mm) and the thickest a trunk may grow (Trunk cap, 2 mm). Switch Branching off and every tip gets its own column.

Cross bracing ties tall trunks to each other. Raft under the feet lays a slab under every foot that reaches the plate. It ships off in all three profiles, with a hull footprint for Light and Medium and a rectangle for Heavy.

Add and remove by hand

The pill at the top of the section has four modes: Place, Paint, Block and Edit.

• Place: click the model to put a support under that point. Alt-click a support to remove it.
• Paint: drag over what needs holding, ctrl-click for the whole surface, alt to erase. Brush is the radius in mm and Surface angle limits how far a flood from one click may turn. Then press Fill painted areas. The Rim and Inside switches in the Fill block each have a Spacing (3 mm when first switched on) and can be left out.
• Block: paint where no support may go. A support pushed off a blocked face leans past it.
• Edit: see the next section.

Supports you place or fill stay when you run Generate again.

Move single supports

In Edit, click a tip, a strut, a joint, the trunk or the foot to pick it. The part turns green. Drag a picked part to carry it. Shift adds to the pick, alt removes from it.

A tip stays on the surface it holds, and a move that would push any part of the support into the model is refused: the support stays where it was. The foot stays on the plate.

A picked support is frozen: its points leave the automatic run. Three buttons act on the pick: Move to the group in hand, Grow these again (hands them back to the automatic run) and Remove these supports. Remove every support in the On the plate block clears the plate.

Give some supports their own settings

A group is a set of supports built to one profile. Press New group under Group, rename it, and every field edits the group in hand. Supports you generate, place or fill join that group. To retune an existing support, pick it in Edit and press Move to the group in hand. The first group cannot be dropped.

Use this for a thick support under a chin and thin ones on a face. Groups never share a trunk, so splitting a bed into two costs resin.

If something goes wrong

Standing is lower than Supports. Those supports have less than 0.2 mm of room, or the body would run into the model. Move or tilt the model, or lower Clearance in the Pillar fold (0.6 mm on all profiles). Supports that cannot stand are kept, so a model you move up gets them back.

The tip leaves a mark. A bigger Contact and a sphere tip hold harder and scar more. A cone is the smallest scar and the weakest grip. Plane presses a flat disc and bites nothing, for a face that must not be pierced.

A support is in the wrong place. In Edit, pick it and drag it, or alt-click it in Place and click again.

Nothing happens on Generate. The status bar says “Nothing on the plate needs holding up”: by the Overhang angle, no layer is unsupported. Lower the angle, or place supports yourself.