Enhancement request - Change at point

[Colin Gilchrist]

I posted this question in the Beta forum but I wanted to solicit some feedback from the regular users as well.

 

We often use Mastercam's "Change at point" option on contour toolpaths to adjust the feedrate for sections of the toolpath. The biggest problem is selecting the point at which you want the change to occur and where you want the change to end. You need to click near the endpoint that is on the element that you want to change, but you have to pick the endpoint that is closer to the end of the chain. If you don't know the process it can be very confusing to figure out where the changes are taking place along the chain.

 

What I would like to see in the Change at point function is a bit of an update to the interface and display. I would like two buttons added to the Change at point dialog box; a "Select start point" and a "Select end point" selection button. This would allow you to select a section of the toolpath chain to apply a change too by picking the start point and end point of the change. The start point should be highlighted in Green and the endpoint should be highlighted in Red. The section of the chain between the points should either change color or thickness to indicate that a change has occured to that section.

 

Currently if you want to make a change to a section of toolpath you must use the change at point dialog twice. The first time you make a change, it propogates that change to the rest of the chain. Then you use Change at point again to reset the rest of the toolpath back to it's original parameters. This is not intuitive, and it can be hard to remember what values to change the rest of the path back too.

 

Take this logic a little further for modifying Z values (for hopping over clamps). It would be nice if you could use the Change at point dialog box to select multiple sections and make a common change. As you go along the chain you would pick multiple start and endpoints, then enter the parameters. For example, you could create a "clamp jump" and then select your points. It would be nice to see them labeled too. You could have S1 and E1, S2 and E2, S3 and E3, ect. That way you could use one dialog box, select multiple sections of the toolpath easily and apply the change to all those sections. It would be nice if you could get the sections that have been changed to keep their change at point modifications to stay displayed in the Chain manager if you exit and come back into the chain manager.

 

That way if you go back into an operation that has been modified, you could see those modifications graphically on the chain.

 

Currently if you wanted to do 4 clamp jumps on a contour toolpath, it would require you to use the "Change at point" function 8 times. I can't tell you the number of times in the past that I've made dozens of changes to a tool path, regenerated the path, gone into backplot, and then realized that I made a mistake.

 

This would be a serious productivity boost to a majority of the shops out there that use the contour toolpath.

 

Comments, suggestions?

[peon]

I would love your idea applied to the toolpath editor. I would love to select an entire group of passes to delete rather than deleting every path individually. Good idea Colin!

[edmBosto]

quote:

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Select start point" and a "Select end point" selection button

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I would also like to see that. Good idea

[William Grizwald]

How about:

Select the geometry

Right click select "Options"

Change feed...

Now, that would be nice.

 

The big problem for me is many times I can't use the Change at point with the selection arrow, I must scroll thru the list. Makes for a long day looking for geometry.

 

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Bill

[Rockness Allen Machine]

Great suggestion. I am very familiar with the fustration.

[Bruce Caulley]

How about "Graphical Toolpath Editing"?

[Span]

Excellent idea. The way it works now I find it easier to edit the code than to use change at point for many things.

 

quote:

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Select the geometry

Right click select "Options"

Change feed...

Now, that would be nice.

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That would be very nice.

[Thad]

I agree with everything you said, Colin.

 

quote:

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How about:

Select the geometry

Right click select "Options"

Change feed...

Now, that would be nice.

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Now THAT would be the berries!

 

Thad

[steve f]

Colin, I like your ideas

 

to expand on the clamp avoidance idea a little...

 

I'd like it if a safety zone could be set for any solid, not just stock. Avoiding clamps and the like would just be a matter of selecting a solid from the safety zone page, setting an expansion amount (to gaurantee clearance) and letting mcam do the figurin'.

 

muchas easier IMO.

 

steve