Resolving broken chains X5

[KLP1190]

Howdy all, I am new to the forum so please forgive me if I am posting in the wrong area or anything like that. 

 

I am working on a project at work and I have run into a bit of an issue. I do a lot of engraving on cylindrical tubes. Really detailed art engravings. I am trying to create a pocket in mastercam to make my engraving stand out against the rest of the tube. I did my art work for the piece in Illustrator and imported it into mastercam X5 as a .dxf file. When I begin to chain my pocket I end up with a bunch of broken chains. Zooming in really close does show that the lines just barely don't touch. When I try to draw a line to connect the two end points I get a zero line length error. I have no idea what to do here. I need to be able to chain the solid outline of my engraving pattern to make the pocket around it. 

 

Please help, thanks guys.

[Myth Project]

You may try a "Delete Duplicates" and possibly a "Find Overlap".  When I've ran into this issue in the past I would trim/extend both entities to each other and it would usually fix my issue.

[JoshC]

Good morning and welcome to the forums. Firstly, if your able to update to X9, do so immediately because it blows x5 out of the water. Unfortunately i can not remember where in x5 the chaining tolerance is located but when you are chaining there should be a button (in x9 its an exclamation (!) mark) and when you go into the chaining options you should see a chaining tolerance. This chaining tolerance controls the maximum distance permissible between endpoints. Simply loosen the tolerance and you may be able to chain the geo much more easily. 

 

If you can not find that chaining tolerance in that location then go into settings configuration and it will be somewhere in there called chaining tolerance.

 

I hope this helps!

 

EDIT: also what Myth mentioned above is also a good idea, to be more specific, hit alt+C on the keyboard and look for a find overlap, then hit ctrl+a and then enter. Then hit "cleanup" 

[KLP1190]

I have tried the delete duplicates and find overlap functions. Neither one worked for me. 

 

I moved on to the next suggestion of loosening the chaining tolerances. I was able to find that and it allowed me to select my chain with no problem, but when I go to creat the pocket tool path it is still throwing me an open pocket error. 

 

I appreciate the input from you guys, but anything else I can try?

[crazy^millman]

You have bad geometry plain and simple. Redraw the chains and make good geometry to work from and everything will be good to go. Bad into the equation and expect bad out. I suspect you are working with a surface model exported from a different CAD. The engineer didn't bother to check their export tolerances that are set to .005" and exported the surface model. You then created curves everywhere and now nothing connects. Why you always want to work with solids and not surfaces in to DPD/MBD manufacturing process.

 

Take the time to make it right and you will get good results, keep taking the bad you got and trying to make it work and you will keep fighting it for no good reason.

 

HTH(Hope that Helps)

 

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