Patent attributes
A computer-aided design (CAD) system may support spatially-aware detection of trapped support areas in 3D printing. The CAD system may detect trapped support areas in the surface mesh in that detected trapped support area do not have linear access to an opening in the surface mesh, including by surrounding the surface mesh with a virtual bounding box that encloses the surface mesh, mapping the virtual bounding box and surface mesh into a 3D cube space, and tracking mesh cubes and bounding cubes of the 3D cube space. For a given mesh face of the surface mesh, The CAD system may determine whether the given mesh face is part of a trapped support area by projecting a ray from the given mesh face and assessing the given mesh face as part of a trapped support area based on the ray passing through a mesh cube or a bounding cube.
