Programming Tip - Merge STL Stock

[Colin Gilchrist]

Hi Guys,

 

I just wanted to share something I just discovered in Mastercam X that will help with accurate measurement of your verifications.

 

In X you can Verify your roughing (or finishing) operations in Verify, then use the "Save stock as file" button to save a copy of your roughed out stock as an STL.

 

Then when you exit Verify you can use File - Merge/Pattern and merge in your newly saved STL model (just select .STL file type in the drop down menu). Mastercam will merge in your STL file as a bunch of lines, giving you the "wireframe" of your STL.

 

Then you can go into the Stock Setup section of the machine group properties, select the radio button for "File" and use the Arrow selection button to browse for your STL file. Set the Display option radio button to "Solid" and now you get a red translucent solid of your roughed out STL block, with merged STL wireframe that you can use to measure your stock accurately with the tools in Analyze.

 

A couple words of caution:

 

For this to work you must be in "True Solid" mode.

 

In your Verify Configuration menu you will need to set the accuracy of your tool profile and your STL model. In order to get a really accurate verified part you would need to set these values very small (.0002) which would take a long time to verify. If you use .001 for each setting, it will still take a long time, but it will be about + or - .002 in the accuracy of the verification because of the tolerance stackup.

 

You would also need to turn up the speed/quality slider all the way to quality.

 

STL files model every surface, including curved surfaces, as a series of small triangles refered to as facets. The smaller you set your tolerances, the more facets you will get on your models, but the visual quality of the model will be much better .

 

Increasing the number of facets on the model can create a huge amount of lines (100,000+ easily, depending on the complexity of your model) when you bring in the STL wireframe, which could really slow down your computer if it is older and doesn't have a decent graphics card. I don't think this will work very well for very complex parts with lots of cut surfaces because of the number of lines.

 

Just wanted to point out some of the potential pitfalls before you encounter them.

 

Let me know what you guys think.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Colin Gilchrist

The Boeing Company

MR2 and Beta test site

[kunfuzed]

I recently tried using an stl in my second op file, but it gave me some error about not being "watertight". I can't remember if this happened befor or after I xformed it. That was in 9.1, haven't tryed X yet. Anyone ever seen that before?

[Jack Neelands™]

Thanks Colin

[Jimic]

I still having the "Watertight" problem since form V9. to X. "In-house" told me they can't fix that problem beacuse that part of software was from others company ??

[Justin Beebe at Folsom Tool]

Sometimes the STLHeal c-hook fixes that error but as you probably know it is hit or miss. Thanks for the info Collin when I get some extra time I will look into that.