About Support Structures
Support structures are auxiliary structures that support the models that you print in additive manufacturing. With a Creo Additive Manufacturing Plus Extension for Materialise license, you can use the Materialise SG+ module to generate support structures in Creo.
When you generate support structures, the system generates them using the active support structure profile for the entire tray assembly. But you can edit the support structures for the tray, or individual support structures.
Support structures are defined by parameters. They include things like the support structure shape, and the behavior at the edges of the model. For detailed information about each support parameter, see the Support Parameters section in Part III, section 3.7 of the Materialise Magics24User Manual.
The parameters are grouped into profiles. The profiles are stored in a folder. For information about setting the path to the folder, see To Set Additive Manufacturing Options.
You manage the profiles using the Support Structure Profiles dialog box. You can select an existing profile to apply to your tray assembly or to individual support structures. You can copy an existing profile, and edit the parameters to define a new profile. You can save the profile that you define. You can import profiles that were created using Materialise software.
When you generate support structures, the system creates a single new component in the tray assembly. The support component is a container for all the support structures in the tray assembly. It is located at the bottom of the Model Tree, and is represented by . The individual support blocks are facet features that are represented in the Model Tree by .
The support structure profile that is used for each facet feature is listed in the Support Structure Profile column in the Model Tree. An asterisk (*) in front of the support structure profile name indicates that the profile has been edited for that facet feature. The parameters of the edited profile have different values than the parameters of the profile with the same name but without an asterisk.