Support Lab

Support Lab

Full control. Fewer wasted clicks.

A desktop support-authoring tool for experienced resin printers. You decide contact size, penetration, shaft geometry, and load path. The app never auto-places, auto-orients, or “improves” your work — it just makes precise manual work faster.

Choose your download v0.2.0

Scroll to the builds below and pick Apple Silicon or Intel yourself — browsers often guess wrong.

Designed like tooling, not magic

If you already know where islands form, how tip Ø trades off with scarring, and why orientation is half the print — this is for you.

  • Explicit actions only

    Nothing is added, moved, or deleted unless you do it. There is no silent support generator running in the background.

  • Parametric, not baked early

    Supports stay editable definitions — contact Ø, tip length, shaft upper/lower, foot boss, penetration — until you export.

  • Slicer stays the slicer

    Resin profiles, layer settings, and printer transfer remain in Lychee / CHITUBOX. Support Lab owns the geometry authoring step only.

Support Types editor with parametric tip, shaft, and foot preview
Visual support editor — tip, shaft, and foot stay parametric until export

Capability detail

Professional viewport habits, millimetre-accurate contacts, and bulk edits that behave like CAD — not a slicer’s afterthought panel. Each capability below gets its own still or short loop as we ship them.

Single-support routing

Click a surface contact; the pillar routes tip → joint → vertical shaft → plate foot. Every dimension is live-editable. Presets (light / medium / heavy / custom) set starting values — never lock you in.

Bridges & struts

Two-click spans between surfaces or onto existing support spines. Standard bridges keep tip/joint anatomy; strut profiles are shaft-only helpers for bracing without extra knuckles. Delete a parent pillar and attached dependents go with it.

Strut bracing between two surfaces with move gizmo at the contact
Strut span — shaft-only brace between surfaces

Pattern distributions

Line, rectangle, circle, and path layouts with spacing or count control, margins, and live preview before commit. Density is your call; the tool only removes repetitive placement work.

Path pattern — draw a curve, preview density, commit supports

Linked instances

Array a part as instances: change scale or rotation on one, and every linked copy updates with it. Independent duplicates are still available when you want a one-off.

Rectangular instance pattern of parts on the build plate
Linked instances — one transform, every copy follows

Visual support editor

Inspect and edit support anatomy in a dedicated editor — contact Ø, penetration, tip, shaft, foot, presets — without digging through opaque property lists. What you see is what exports.

Support Types editor with parametric tip, shaft, and foot preview
Tip, shaft, and foot stay parametric until export

Surface inspection

Viewport materials built for reading form: normal-map shading, 3D checker, clay and ceramic looks. Spot flatness, undercuts, and contact quality before you commit supports — display only, never baked into the STL.

Same tire shown in clay, lit, checker, and normal-shading materials
Material strip — clay, lit, checker, and normals for reading form

Print cages

Parametric rect / circle cages with floor, walls, and arch or honeycomb openings. Size, thickness, and density stay editable; export with the model when you need a protective frame for the print.

Rectangular print cage with honeycomb walls around a supported model
Rect cage — floor, walls, honeycomb / arch openings

Selection & bulk edit

Multi-select, rectangle/lasso, select-similar by preset, duplicate, retarget type, and delete in one pass. Undo/redo covers the full support graph — same expectations as desktop engineering software.

Tool rail with Select active alongside orient, transform, and analysis tools
Select mode — pick, transform, and analysis tools in one rail

Contact inspection

Toggle (or hold) a mode where the model goes transparent and contact footprints draw at true physical diameter. Read diameter and penetration in mm; spot weak or disconnected contacts before they cost a failed print.

Contact inspection mode with transparent model and highlighted contact footprints
Contact footprints at true tip diameter

Island analysis

Layer-step occupancy with bridge tolerance and optional grounding from existing support columns. Markers land on undersides; place a pillar from a marker without leaving Supports mode. Tunable layer height, cell size, min area, and bridge mm.

Island analysis with section plane and a marked unsupported island
Find islands — section plane, marker, add support from the hit

Viewport that respects scale

Z-up, millimetres, build plate, Fusion/Blender/3ds Max/Maya navigation presets. Materials and overlays stay viewport-only — they never alter export geometry.

Supported engine STL on a Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K build plate
Plate, supports, and CAD-familiar navigation

Export for the next hop

Binary STL out: combined supported mesh, or oriented model + supports as two files with identical baked coordinates. Transformations are baked; contacts overlap by configured penetration — no microscopic gaps for the slicer to “fix” later.

Where it sits in the pipeline

Author geometry where you already do. Support in Support Lab. Slice and expose in the tool you trust for resin and printer I/O.

  1. 01
    CAD / mesh out Export STL or OBJ (mm) from Fusion, Blender, or equivalent. No resin profile required here.
  2. 02
    Orient + support Position the part, place parametric supports, inspect contacts, clear islands, save a project file if you need to revise later.
  3. 03
    Hand off to slicer Import into Lychee or CHITUBOX. Keep orientation locked if you split model/supports — then set resin, layer, and machine as usual.
Section plane through a supported model showing hatch fill
Section while you support — check load paths before you leave for the slicer

Read before you download

macOS install notes

These friend builds are not notarized yet (Apple Silicon and Intel alike). Gatekeeper will warn you — that is expected, not a corrupt download. Do this once after installing, then use the buttons below.

If macOS says the app is “damaged”

Chrome / Safari attach a quarantine flag. Unsigned apps then fail with a false “damaged” dialog. Clear it once after you mount the DMG and copy the app to Applications (or keep it in Downloads): 

xattr -cr "/Applications/Support Lab.app"

If the app is still in Downloads, use that path instead. Then open the app again.

If macOS says it “can’t be verified”

  1. Right-click (or Control-click) Support Lab.app → Open → confirm Open.
  2. Or: System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the blocked-app message → Open Anyway, then open the app once more.

After the first successful Open, normal double-clicks work. Same steps for Apple Silicon and Intel builds.

Current release builds

v0.2.0 Early access — pick Apple Silicon, Intel Mac, or Windows yourself.

Early-access builds for trusted testers (~14 days after compile, then the app asks you to install a newer build).