Additive Manufacturing > Support Structures > About Support Structures
  
About Support Structures
Support structures are auxiliary structures that support the models that you print in additive manufacturing. When you connect to a printer through a Materialise build processor, you can generate support structures using Creo.
When you generate support structures, the system generates default support structures 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. 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 structures are facet features that are represented in the Model Tree by .