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The Support Reduction can be activated for every optimisation scenario separately under the Design Rules entry. Three different Support Reduction Modes (Passivelow, Reactive medium & Activehigh) can be chosen. Moreover, for Reactive and Active an Intensity value can be set up.
Build direction
The build direction is the z-direction of the Principal Coordinate System. For each scenario the Build Direction can be easily rotated and is then used for the Design Rules as well as material properties.
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For different applications there are different priorities and for some the manufacturability is specially high. Therefore, it would be nice to push designs in a direction where the manufacturing gets easier without costing to too much performance regarding the efficient design and material allocation.
For this use case a Support Reduction function is implemented which takes the needed support for additive manufacturing into account while optimising the part. The function got three different strategies which could be used. The three different strategies are:
Passivelow
Reactivemedium
Activehigh
The influence of the Support Reduction on the design increases from passive low to reactive to active high.
For reactive and active a second value can be defined, the intensity. The intensity can be chosen between 1 and 10, where 1 is very low and 10 is very high. Take in mind that a very high intensity could lead to a slower performance and unusual results. It is recommended to start with the first strategy and use the other two together with the intensity if the results are not satisfying.
Tip: Use the Shape Quality “Fine Tune” to get better results and get rid of artifacts that can occur during the support reductionLow has less impact and the design is close to an optimisation run without Support Reduction. In critical areas the support amount gets reduced. Medium and high have more impact on the design and reduce the needed support amount significantly.
By default an overhang surface is determined if the angle falls below 45° in relation to the baseplate. The overhang angle can be changed with the Advanced User Settings.
In the next images an example part is used to display the difference between results of the strategies.
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View from underneath wit with the corresponding support structures in Simufact Additive:
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In the following graph the influence of the strategies is illustrated. It can be saved up to 78% 80% of support volume with activated Support Reduction. As a trade off the mass of the part increases. Because more material is used the part gets a little bit stiffer.
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