To Orient a Part

To calculate orientation recommendations

1. Select a part to orient.
2. From the main menu, choose Arrange > Orient Part.
3. Set up the parameters as appropriate:

   Parameter	Effect
   Selected Triangles to be unsupported	Use the painting controls in the toolbar to define areas that must not be supported to affect the ranking as needed. (Read-only display.)
   Critical Angle	Calculates support for all surfaces angled against the X/Y plane, up to this angle. This is similar to the Critical and Non-Critical Angle (set to the same value) of the Support module.
   Support bottom surface	Takes into consideration the fact that any surface in contact with the platform still requires support.
   Distance to platform (Z)	Enables you to specify an additional distance of up to 50 mm, resulting in appropriately more support volume. Switch between Precise Volume and Approximate Volume to allocate more or less calculation time to the estimation of support volume.
   Smallest Rotation between Orientation	When parts have highly irregular shapes, viable orientations may be found, rotationally, in close proximity. Use this setting to reduce the number of results to the most relevant ones: If multiple viable orientations have been found up to this rotational angle apart, the best one is selected and the other ones discarded. Smaller values significantly increase the calculation time. Optionally, restrict calculations to rotations around either the X or Y axis.
   Fit part into platform	If no restriction is given, the packer will continue to stack beyond available buildspace height.
   Distance to side walls	Specify an additional margin between packable space and platform border.
   Limit the Build Height	Specify a margin between packable space and buildspace height.
   (Ranking scheme selector)	Here you can select from ranking schemes, and also edit them. Netfabb comes with one default scheme where supported area, support volume, outbox volume, part height, center-of-gravity height, and unsupported triangles are weighted with equal importance. You may create new ones using a basic interface where each criterion can be set on importance scale, or a formula editor to create sophisticated ranking schemes.

4. Click Search Orientations to calculate orientation suggestions based on the values and ranking scheme specified.

This generates a list of viable orientations which you can cycle and examine through.

To view recommended part orientations

Calculated suggestions appear in a second tabsheet, called Choose orientation.

1. Click the column headers to sort by them in ascending or descending order.
2. Identify a row with as much green as possible and ideally no red, and click on it to see the part rotate to the suggested orientation.
3. Continue to click on different rows to see the suggested part orientation and the required support for that orientation.
4. Once you have selected an orientation, click OK to accept the selection, and return to the default model view.

   The Orient Part tabsheet closes and the calculated suggestions are discarded.