contour, window

[SVO]

Hi everyone, I have a grid of letters and numbers laid out inside a 24 inch square. When I toolpath, contour,window, inside, and choose endpoint to search, it works perfect and toolpaths everything. What I don't like is the order it chooses. Very sporadic. Engraving with a very small end mill, I think it will be hard to find a spot to restart if the tool chips or breaks. Is there a way to the order in which it toolpaths.

Thanks for any advice.

Dan

[gstephens]

The window chaining follows a definite pattern that can be switched between one-way and zig-zag. It works like this...1st, all point entities are selected with a "next closest" method starting with the point closest to your "start point" selection. 2nd, again starting from the same start point, it finds the closest endpoint of an entity and chains as if you selected the chain at that point. From here it does one of two things:

If your setting is for zig-zag, it searches from the endpoint of the chain for the next closest entity and continues. If your setting is for one-way, it returns to the start point of the current chain and searches from there. Either way the method is pre-determined. You can, however, go to the Geometry in the ops manager after the fact and re-order the chain as you like.

Hope this helps.

[SVO]

Thank you gstephens, you explained it very well.