Help getting continuous chains

[jonathan joseph]

Hi all

Sorry for the novice question. 

When I'm drawing certain parts, most of which are pretty simply (all 2D flat parts out of sheet using X8 router)  and I make lots of changes as I'm designing, lengthening, shortening, adding features etc. when I go to toolpath I often find my lines won't allow me to just select and get a nice clean chain all the way around. I get lots of "branch point not reached" warnings and have to hit the blue plus sign button to add the next section of line. Sometimes its because I've messed up and the lines are not actually connected but most of the time they are or if they're not I fix it by extended the line or drawing new lines to replace the segmented ones. Usually when I've gone and selected all of the lines to get me all the way around the path I want, it makes it one clean chain. But it's a pain to have to select them all (and I know its just the wrong way to be doing it) and when I'm trying to use the "chain feature" function to have the progrma find them all for me, it won't recognize the other features obviously. I do alot of stuff with lots of small holes and cutouts. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong when I create the geometry. I'm trying to make my drawings cleaner and make less changes as I go but if there is a way to workaround this once in a while it would be good to know. 

Thanks in advance. 

(PS I may have asked a similar question in the past sorry if this seems repetitive.) 

EDIT: Here's an example of the problem. I draw a square part with some small rectangular tabs sticking out. I decide after drawing the tabs that the corners need a radius (tab is .125 long and radius is .090) I go back and radius all the corners and when I go to tool path it treats the .035 leg of the tab and the radiused part as different lines and won't automatically chain all the way around the part. I have to select each section. Sometime I don't have these problems and other times I do, don't know what's different. 

Jonathan 

[Leon82]

You probably have overlapping entities, duplicate entities or non coplanar entities

[jonathan joseph]

20 minutes ago, Leon82 said:

You probably have overlapping entities, duplicate entities or non coplanar entities

Thanks for the reminder. I've tried deleting duplicates and not had success but that was the problem in this specific case. I just deleted all duplicates and boom, chains right around the whole thing. Not sure how I'm getting the duplicates still. Need to clean up my drawing technique. I waste a lot of time fixing this stuff. 

Thank you very much! 

[#Rekd™]

57 minutes ago, jonathan joseph said:

Hi all

Sorry for the novice question. 

When I'm drawing certain parts, most of which are pretty simply (all 2D flat parts out of sheet using X8 router)  and I make lots of changes as I'm designing, lengthening, shortening, adding features etc. when I go to toolpath I often find my lines won't allow me to just select and get a nice clean chain all the way around. I get lots of "branch point not reached" warnings and have to hit the blue plus sign button to add the next section of line. Sometimes its because I've messed up and the lines are not actually connected but most of the time they are or if they're not I fix it by extended the line or drawing new lines to replace the segmented ones. Usually when I've gone and selected all of the lines to get me all the way around the path I want, it makes it one clean chain. But it's a pain to have to select them all (and I know its just the wrong way to be doing it) and when I'm trying to use the "chain feature" function to have the progrma find them all for me, it won't recognize the other features obviously. I do alot of stuff with lots of small holes and cutouts. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong when I create the geometry. I'm trying to make my drawings cleaner and make less changes as I go but if there is a way to workaround this once in a while it would be good to know. 

Thanks in advance. 

(PS I may have asked a similar question in the past sorry if this seems repetitive.) 

EDIT: Here's an example of the problem. I draw a square part with some small rectangular tabs sticking out. I decide after drawing the tabs that the corners need a radius (tab is .125 long and radius is .090) I go back and radius all the corners and when I go to tool path it treats the .035 leg of the tab and the radiused part as different lines and won't automatically chain all the way around the part. I have to select each section. Sometime I don't have these problems and other times I do, don't know what's different. 

Jonathan 

If you can link a file I can make you a video showing you the problems. I don't have X8 loaded, I have X9 still installed which is pretty similar.

Leon82 most likely nailed it with the problem.

 

[nickbe10]

1 hour ago, jonathan joseph said:

Thank you very much! 

Analyze chain gives an overlapping chain repair option.

I think there is another somewhere.....chook / nethook?

[David Colin]

There is a hook named findoverlap.dll.

Colin (I think) post a video recently showing various tips and tricks to fix these issues

[jonathan joseph]

Thank you. I will look into these solutions. 

 

[pullo]

One of the best graphic tests for a 2d chain is the ability to extrude a solid.  If you have several of them on the screen , you could window chain them the chains that don't give you a  proper solid are the ones that have problems. 

Another giveaway is the curve you choose to start a chain. If the chain ends up starting off of another cure , you have found your culprit.

Gracjan

[Steelab]

Not sure if it's the same in X8 but a few things to try are:

 

In your example of putting radius on sharp corners do you have trim selected or is it leaving the sharp as well as adding the fillet?  Select trim entities to delete the sharp corner automatically.

 

Also from your example, if all of your external corners are getting the same radius you can probably just address this in your toolpath by changing your external corner break radius in cut parameters.

 

Make sure you have CPlane selected in chaining instead of 3d and make sure your WCS, Construction, and Tool plane are set to the same plane as your wireframe geometry. Sometimes if you are changing views your C and T will follow your G view and if you start chaining it will think you are trying to chain on a perpendicular plane. There's a setting to make it so G doesn't follow C and T but I think it does by default...

 

Try setting your z depth to the same depth as your wireframe and set it to 2d instead of 3d.

 

Again, not sure if any of this helps because I'm using 2021...