Paint on supports -- enhancements?
I have a rectangular grid of 0.8mm thick fins on ~10mm square spacing that need support. Those fins, in turn, support a flat top. The top itself does not need support because the fins provide enough support for bridging. So I am painting supports on the bottom of the grid, from the bottom (#2) view. It is painful, particularly on a laptop using the pad. It would be much easier if there was a way to paint similar to the way you can draw straight lines in most programs -- click once for a starting point, move to the end of the line, hold shift and click again. I know shift is already appropriated for removing the selection, but some combination (alt shift?) is still open. Is it already possible to do this?
It would also be useful to restrict the angle of surfaces being painted, such that anything with an angle < a given angle is not painted. So in my case, if I'm set to bottom view, and angle of 90 degrees would prevent supporting anything but bottom surfaces. Using the circle instead of the sphere helps, but if you have chamfers to support stuff and don't want to paint the chamfers it's a problem
Finally, it would be useful if I could restrict the height of what is being painted. In my particular case, I can set the top view and the restrict the clipping plane to eleminate the top, switch back to the bottom view, and paint. But that doesn't cover all cases. If I could set the paint region to min < paint-allowed < max height, I could restrict painting to the bottom surface of the fins.
Is any of this already possible?
Best Answer by Neophyl:
Thanks. Turns out it wasn't zipped it was just renamed again. That's ok for getting the forum to accept the files, unfortunately when you do unzip them the file is not openable in PS. Once I figured out what you had done though the project was available to see.
Painting on those areas is a very quick 3 step process. Not difficult at all.
Select the object and change to Paint on Support tool. Change your view so you are looking at it from the bottom (number 2 on the keypad if your machine has one). Now we can start.
Change the Highlight Overhang by angle slider to something small like 5 degrees and click enforce. This will result in all the bottom surfaces being marked as enforced including the tops you don't want.
Next with the view still from the bottom change the clipping slider. Something like 0.47 is ok for this object. That will remove the bottom of the ribs from the view.
Now make your brush size quite large, maximum if you want. Then just use Shift+mouse to remove the enforced areas at the top.
That's it, done. Took me about 20 seconds at most to do.
If you remove the clipping you will see that the ribs are painted with enforcers but the tops above them aren't. As the bottom is on the bed we don't have to worry about removing those areas, they don't do anything.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
Sorry without some pictures or an example in a zipped up project file to experiment with I cant figure out what you are trying to describe.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
Example attached. While this object can be printed as is, the actual object has things sticking out of the flat surface, so pretend it is flipped over so the flat surface is on top.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
There are at least a couple of open tickets on GitHub for a straight line painting feature (including from Yours Truly). Should be easy to implement but hasn't happened yet. I love the paint on option for supports end seams but without straight lines it can be a royal pain.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
Sorry the zip file appears to be corrupt, windows built in zip extractor cant open it and 7zip says its not an archive. I even tried renaming the file to 3mf just in case the file type had just been renamed but PS wont open that either.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
That files begins with
MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH-MESH
and then the rest is binary. Clearly not a Zip file.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
Sorry the zip file appears to be corrupt, windows built in zip extractor cant open it and 7zip says its not an archive. I even tried renaming the file to 3mf just in case the file type had just been renamed but PS wont open that either.
It's not a zip file; the forum won't upload .stl files. Just rename it .stl
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
The forum needs zipped up files, I was asking for a project file. File>Save Project as. This saves a 3mf file from PS that will have the model and all the settings as well as anything else involved. Just zip up the 3mf and the forum will accept it. Project files are the single best way of debugging things.
That way we can see what you have attempted to do with regards to supports. If we can see what you have done then its possible someone can suggest a more efficient way of doing them.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
My mistake, attached zipped .3mf file (I hope)
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
Thanks. Turns out it wasn't zipped it was just renamed again. That's ok for getting the forum to accept the files, unfortunately when you do unzip them the file is not openable in PS. Once I figured out what you had done though the project was available to see.
Painting on those areas is a very quick 3 step process. Not difficult at all.
Select the object and change to Paint on Support tool. Change your view so you are looking at it from the bottom (number 2 on the keypad if your machine has one). Now we can start.
Change the Highlight Overhang by angle slider to something small like 5 degrees and click enforce. This will result in all the bottom surfaces being marked as enforced including the tops you don't want.
Next with the view still from the bottom change the clipping slider. Something like 0.47 is ok for this object. That will remove the bottom of the ribs from the view.
Now make your brush size quite large, maximum if you want. Then just use Shift+mouse to remove the enforced areas at the top.
That's it, done. Took me about 20 seconds at most to do.
If you remove the clipping you will see that the ribs are painted with enforcers but the tops above them aren't. As the bottom is on the bed we don't have to worry about removing those areas, they don't do anything.
RE: Paint on supports -- enhancements?
Thank you! Your explanation plus a little practice did wonders.