Cura 5.3.0 Bug - Remove Empty First Layers

[CrazyIvan]

I was tearing my hair out trying to raise a model off the build plane in Cura 5.3.0 and failing.

Why would I want to?

The idea is to make clean-up easier for a print with an uneven underside. If a decent amount of support structure can be printed below, perhaps it can be removed as one lump instead of there being rather a thin support.

Everything I tried in Cura defeated me. I could raise the model off the plane in Prepare turning off "Drop Down Model" and setting a value for the z offset, but then having sliced in the Preview view, the model was back on the plane again, but with a ghost of the model off the plane.

Solution

I found "remove empty first layers" in the Preferences for Mesh Tools, but although the option was ticked to be available in the menus, it was not appearing. Enquiries on the Cura forum hinted this was the answer, and further investigation revealed there is a bug in Cura 5.3.0 (and others) such that this setting is hidden unless support is turned off, so the work-around is to turn off support, disable "remove empty first layers", then turn support back on.

Having done so, preview shows the model at the specified z offset, with support structure underneath it.