Advanced Support and Voxel Transformations

In this tutorial we will see how we can apply two features of Voxelizer, tree support and voxel transformations, to a model that would in most cases be very complicated to print.

The model is the following, a prototype of a parametric architecture piece:

As you can see it has many overhangs and many thin parts. If we had to print it using traditional support we would use a lot of material and spend a lot of time, plus the chances of failure during removal would be high.

It is in this type of situation that tree support comes in handy.

Before applying the support, let’s look more closely at our model. You will notice that the bottom part, where the four branches are merging, is not touching the surface and is not flat. Left unchanged this will create a very weak base for our model even if we use support. This is a problem we need to fix.

Of course we could go back to our modeling software and address the issue at the start, but we can also operate directly in Voxelizer, thanks to the Voxel transformations panel.

Let’s select the model, go to the voxel transformations tab and move object a -5mm in Z. In this way the problematic part will be under the level of the printing table and will not be printed.

Now we can apply the support. Let’s go to the Printing settings tab and apply a tree support preset, with a cutoff angle of 45 degrees.

Now that the support is generated, you can treat it as any other voxel object. You could, for example, print it with the right extruder (maybe with a soluble material), or apply specific filament durability presets to it. We can also remove part of the support if we wish. In our case, for example, these branches on the exterior surface are not really needed, so we can get rid of them, thanks to voxel selection.

We select the voxels by pressing the SHIFT key and by dragging with the mouse. CTRL + mouse will remove voxels from the selection.We can find further options for manipulation in the Selection Manipulation tab, inside Voxel transformations. After selecting the desired voxels we can right click on the object and, under the selection options, we can click on Delete on this  to remove them.