Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese  

RE: Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese

This actually would have been really helpful just the other day as I was trying to figure out how to do exactly this! The solution I came up wasn't quite as elegant, but a similar idea as what this guy showed.

The first thing that occurred to me, though (which PrusaSlicer does not allow for whatever reason), was to simply apply brim with a modifier shape. Then all you'd have to do is place the modifier over any area where you want brim, then let the slicer apply your desired brim width only on that area without having to worry about the actual shape or size of the brim object. Covered=Brim. Not covered=No brim. Easy. You could also do the reverse; turn the global brim on and use modifiers to remove brim from select areas like inside corners. This would be so much simpler than either my method or the one shown in the video. It certainly wouldn't take 30 minutes to thoroughly explain, that's for sure.

I'm assuming there's some technical reason why brims can only be applied to whole objects, and not to parts or modifiers. It would be a really useful feature, though.

RE: Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese

@jcote490

I thought Modifiers would have been the way to go also, but after learning what this guy had to teach, I realized that his way is much more powerful and also easier to use than the Modifier would be. 

Modifiers have to be added to specific Objects, that means that you would have to select each Object and then select its Modifier and it would only apply the brim to that Objects parts. The way it was shown in the video you can just import these after you make them the first time, and they will apply to any object on the platter or even multiple Objects at once! as long as the Objects were told they were allowed to have a brim. Not only that but you can just grab them right on the platter and move them around, turn them on and off, set them aside without slicer telling you it can’t print because part of an Object is outside the build area.

I guess everyone has their own way to look at things, I was happy to give 30 minutes of my life to learn this. I would even have paid for this type of information.

This is a "really useful feature"

I’d like to see more.

RE: Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese

Good old Swiss_Cheese... we sorely miss him...

RE: Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese

Sadly, the video linked at the top of this thread is no longer available. Does anyone else have an explanation for how to do this?

In spite of the argument in favor of the more general approach, I personally would love to be able to apply modifier objects to portions of a model, for this very purpose.

But any method for selectively suppressing a portion of a brim would be great.

RE: Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese

Update: I think I found a copy of the same video. If not, it still seems like a useful video for this topic:

For posterity though (in case that video goes missing too), here's the basic idea shown in the video:

* Insert a stock shape (e.g. cylinder, box, whatever) into the project. Adjust the object's scale (non-uniformly, i.e. uncheck the lock by the size) so that it has the X and Y dimensions you want, and a Z height of one layer (e.g. 0.2 if that's your layer height).
* Optionally: add a second stock shape as a new part for the first stock shape to act as a handle (i.e. so you can grab the handle to move the whole object around, which lets you get the "brim" object under things where it might be hard to grab)
* Copy paste the first stock shape as a new part into the object and change its part type to "Negative Volume". Adjust its dimensions so that it's slightly smaller in the X and Y than the first shape (e.g. subtract 0.1mm from the radius of a cylinder, or subtract 0.1mm from the X and Y dimensions of a box). This has the effect of making the whole shape just an outside perimeter, by subtracting this slightly smaller copy of the first stock shape from the shape.
* Add new print settings to the first stock shape: Skirt/Brim, add all three options (gap, type, and size). Set the gap to 0, the type to "interior only", and the size large enough to fill the shape (e.g. if your cylinder shape has a radius of 10mm, then the brim size should be 10mm).

Now drag this object to wherever you want a brim on your main model to print. You can copy/paste to create new instances of the object to add multiple brim locations.

Note that when you do this, there are now (at least) two skirt/brim setting locations in play. The settings on the new object you've created affect the brim relative to that object, and generally won't be changed once you have the object set up the way you want. There are also settings on the main object you actually want to print, either in the global settings for the project or, if you've added settings to that object explicitly, you'll be able to adjust them there instead. Either way, these settings affect the relationship between the main object to be printed and the new "brim" object. The main setting you'll care about here is the brim gap; this would be where you control the gap between the main object and the brim object. (As far as I can tell, with this technique, the other two brim settings become moot, since the brim size for the main object should be 0).

The main drawback I see to this approach is the labor involved (I'd much rather just be able to adjust on a modifier-object basis, or even just paint on brims), and that if you use this technique you pretty much can't use regular brims, at least on the object where you're using this type of brim. But it does give you maximum flexibility in deciding where a brim goes, and sometimes that's exactly what you need. 🙂

RE: Pro Tips: ( The Selective Placment of Brims ) By Swiss_Cheese

Huh. I'm not sure why the video link isn't showing up in my previous message. Maybe I added it wrong? I'll try including it here as just a plain URL: The Last Brim video you'll ever need!