There are lots software tools for setting up your model before printing. In this post, we will cover freely available ones that are for prepping models for printing. We do not claim ownership of any following software and associating copyright, trademark or patent.
Model Prepartion -
The most important features are rotation, scaling, adding support, adding base, hollowing and drilling holes. Ability to fix mesh is also very important. Which following tool works best for you? It depends on your skill level and what you want to accomplish.
Autodesk Meshmixer
This one requires little introduction and should be on every 3D printer user's company, not just for resin printing. It does every features you need and more. It can be potential used as the only tool before exporting STL file to Slicing.
Advantages: has all the functions you need, do most of them rather well. Probably the best freely available software for hollowing and making drain holes.
Downside: Buggy and good but not great at many of the functions. Auto orientation is a hit or miss SLA printing. Auto support generation needs a lot of manual work and sometimes produce unprintable support structure like overlapping meshes.
B9Creator
This is a popular software made the B9 team and is used by many resin printing enthusiasts. It is most used function is its support generation. The auto function works ok but tends to create too many support bed of nails style beams. Many advanced users love using B9 with its manual support function. It is often used in conjuection with Meshmixer since B9Creator software cannot hollow an object out. The common complaint from users is that the bed of nails style support do not have interlinks and is suspectible to shifting when it is isolated at long length. (>4cm)
https://www.b9c.com/support/documentation
XYZware Nobel 1.0A
Similar to Zenith, this well made software also offer auto support generation with crossing pattern. It also does not have hollowing feature so it is best to use in conjunction with Meshmixer.
http://support.xyzprinting.com/us_en/Help
Zenith
For users who are new to resin 3D printing and struggle to create good support. Zenith is a popular option for an automatic support and base generation. One of its attraction is that it offers auto generated support/base with crossing pattern, making it a more stable support. However, Zenith software sometimes miss adding support and cannot add support that links back to the object. It may be a good idea to compliment Zenith with Meshmixer to do hollowing and fixing.
zenith3d.co.kr/eng/content/01products/01_01.php
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A good video by Evan Morgan showing how to add support.
