Support Lab — Manual support authoring for resin printing

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.

Multi-joint shafts

Add intermediate knuckles along a plate shaft and drag them in XYZ — dogleg around geometry, stack brace attachment heights, or shape a load path without splitting into separate pillars. Add and remove joints from the selection bar; Delete removes the selected knuckle first.

Plate support with intermediate shaft knuckles and brace attachments at joints — Shaft joints — knuckle spheres you can move, brace, and edit

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

Cross-link braces

Marquee a cluster of plate supports and generate X or diagonal struts between nearest neighbors. Tune diameter, max distance, neighbor count, and stacked rows along the shaft — live preview before you commit. Loners still link within max distance so isolated pillars are not left free-standing.

Brace tool preview with X-cross links between selected plate supports — Brace — marquee pillars, preview X-links, OK to commit

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.

Type, color & quick edit

Select a support and the floating bar appears: swap library types, open the full editor, eyedropper-match another pillar’s geometry, and assign viewport colors for grouping. Joint add/remove sits on the same bar when a plate shaft is selected — no digging through side panels for everyday edits.

Support selection bar with type picker, edit, eyedropper, and color controls — Selection bar — type, edit, eyedropper, color, joints

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

Extruded text

Place solid lettering on the build plate — straight or along a drawn path with bezier handles. Size and extrusion stay parametric; edit content, font, and the curve from the inspector. Duplicate like any other object; export with the model when you need labels, marks, or branding in the print.

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.

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.

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.

01
CAD / mesh out Export STL or OBJ (mm) from Fusion, Blender, or equivalent. No resin profile required here.
02
Orient + support Position the part, place parametric supports, inspect contacts, clear islands, save a project file if you need to revise later.
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”

Right-click (or Control-click) Support Lab.app → Open → confirm Open.
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

v0.2.3 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).

Full control. Fewer wasted clicks.