What the Tool Optimises
Three weights run from 0 to 2 and decide what "best" means for your print:
Support Area
The total area of faces below the overhang threshold — everything that will need support material when sliced.
Bed Contact
How much of the model touches the build plate. More contact equals less risk of the print tipping over mid-job.
Print Height
Total Z range. Shorter prints fail less often, finish faster, and use fewer skirts.
The default mix (1.0 / 0.6 / 0.4) is balanced. Push Support Area higher if you hate cleaning up supports. Push Bed Contact higher for tall, top-heavy models.
The Overhang Threshold
The Overhang Threshold slider (20–60°) controls when the scorer treats a face as needing support. Most well-tuned FDM machines bridge cleanly up to 45° — the default value.
- Drop to 30° if your printer struggles with overhangs (worn rollers, marginal cooling).
- Raise to 55° for fast-cooling resin printers or a well-tuned Bambu/Voron.
Reading the Scoreboard
Click Analyze orientations. The panel ranks all twelve poses from best to worst, showing each one's percentages of supports, bed contact, and Z height.
Click any row to load that orientation into the viewer. The 3D preview updates immediately so you can sanity-check the winner.
Pro Tip — Trust But Verify
The optimizer is a starting point, not gospel. Always preview the winning orientation in your slicer with supports turned on — sometimes the lowest-area orientation hides supports inside difficult-to-clean cavities, which a human eye spots faster than a score.
When to Override
Cosmetic prints (busts, statues, display models) benefit from orienting the visible side away from the support contact, even at a higher support cost. The optimizer does not know which face is "the front" — that is your call.
Click through the ranked list and pick the highest-scoring orientation that still hides seams in non-visible areas (the back of the head, the underside of a base).