S3D Support Settings

[Lateralg]

I need help setting the following support parameters:

1) Support pillar extrusion width. (This may be an option I don't recognize)

2) Density of support pillars. (I suspect this has to do with "Support Pillar Resolution", which has a tool tip of "Determines the resolution used for support material calculation") BTW: What is "Support Pillar Resolution?" Is it pillar density ... the number of pillars/square mm? And, what is a pillar?

3) "Support infill percentage" Purportedly adjusts the spacing between support material webbing. How does "support material webbing" differ from "support pillar"?

It's probably more direct for me to ask the following:
A) Support Pillar Resolution: How does the printed support for a high setting compare with that of a low setting?

B) Support infill Percentage :
How does the printed support for a high setting compare with that of a low setting?

C) What is value of "Dense Support Layer"?

I welcome any advice on the application of these settings.

[jsc]

I cover some of this in my Simplify3D guide (http://github.io/simplify3d-docs/) but that's a long read, so here's my understanding:

Support is calculated using the support pillar resolution. Auto placement uses a grid of the specified spacing, and anything that needs support gets a pillar in that grid location. When you're putting in support manually, the support pillar resolution is also the size of the pillars that you lay down, although you are not restricted to the calculation grid.

Support is generated using the support infill percentage. The support pillars are all unioned together and then it gets filled using the infill percentage. That works just like the regular infill percentage.

Because the support calculation based on the grid works on some system that is not clear to me (it is NOT "any grid location that has any amount of overhang poking into it"), sometimes the automatic support doesn't always extend to where it is needed, say, the complete edge of a curved overhang. So there is a hack, Extra Inflation Distance, which will extend all the support pillars by the given distance.

Dense Support Layers is a new setting, and lets you specify different infill percentages for the last n layers vs. all the lower ones. That is handy if you want a high density infill, but don't want to spend the time and material in building up all the lower layers. A value of 3 or more along with a high infill percentage will get you good quality overhangs.

The above is just my understanding from what I've seen, and may not reflect absolute reality.

[Lateralg]

This helps, but I'm still not there.

There was a time when my "pillars" were nearly paper thin. Now I'm getting very thick, very difficult to remove pillars. How do I get the thin, easy-to-remove pillars?

[jsc]

You may be running into one of the new support options, dense support layers. That tries to give you a much denser support near the object. You can turn that off by setting Dense Support Layers to 0.