nophead
commented
3 years ago You can guard the supports with show_supports(), which shows them in the exploded view but not the assembled view. So you can add an assembly instruction to remove the support and you see it both in place and removed.
However, as you point out, that is not compatible with using the cached STLs, as you need two. To do that add a parameter to the STL to show the supports and default it to false. That will remove it from the assembly views and create an STL without the support. Then you add a file to platters that invokes the stl maker with the support parameter set to true. Give it a name like thing_supported_stl().
A soon as you have any platters you get an stls/printed folder that only contains the STLs that need printing. It will include thing_supported.stl but but not thing.stl.
I also use this technique if I want to rotate an object when printing it as well as when I want to group objects for printing, which is the primary use. The only downside for support is you then won't see it at all in the build instructions but you can still mention it in the instructions.
SmoothieAq
Would love some advice:
I have some parts, where it is beneficial to model some select supports in OpenScad. These supports are then meant to be cut away with a knife after print. But I would like the parts to show in the assemblies without the supports.
How best to do that? I love the speedup of cached stl's with
module xx_stl stl("xxx") model();but then it seems I will need two different stl's?Thanks!