Pillars as support structures in 3D printing
In 3D printing, objects are usually created by laying several layers of plastic on top of one another, as with a hot glue gun. That works excellently for objects with a cube- or pyramid-like shape, but when the object has more than just overhangs (bridges between sub-objects and so on), it can become necessary to build in support structures. These are often generated automatically by 3D slicer programs such as Cura or slic3r. They are less pronounced plastic structures which cannot take much pressure (unlike the structures belonging to the object itself), but offer enough purchase for the printer’s plastic threads to hold on to, making the object printable.