How to use…
The Support Reduction can be activated for every optimisation scenario separately under the Design Rules entry. It can be chosen between the 3 different Support Reduction Modes (Passive, Reactive & Active). Moreover, for Reactive and Active an Intensity value can be set up.
Build direction
The build direction is the gloval z-direction by default. If you want to use another direction than that you have to rotate the part. The only exception to this are symmetrical Designs, for them the build direction is the positive z direction of the symmetry coordinate system.
Attention: The Material Coordinate System does not have an impact on the build direction for the Support Reduction!
General Explanation
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 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:
Passive
Reactive
Active
The influence of the Support Reduction on the design increases from passive to reactive to active.
For the second and for the third strategy 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 reduction
In the next images an example part is used to display the difference between results of the strategies.
View from underneath wit the corresponding support structures in Simufact Additive:
In the following graph the interaction between the part volume and the support volume is illustrated. You can see the little amount of extra volume can reduce a high amount of the support but also that the most active mode needs significant more material. Note that these is only one example that illustrates how the support reduction could look like, but this differs between different parts and tasks. So feel motivated to try the different modes to find the ideal one for your specific part.
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