Surfaces as Material Boundaries

[Skyline]

Is there a way to utilize surfaces as material boundaries particularly for the Opti Roughing strategies? I'm working from a wire-edm workpiece which would be best described with surfaces rather than 3D-wireframe for the material boundaries.

 

Thanks ahead for your time.

 

Cheers

[Skyline]

BTW: I'm using Mastercam X8

[Skyline]

Please help... I'm running behind on a programming job

[crazy^millman]

Create Silhouette boundary from the 3D surfaces and then project that to a 2D place above the part and use that as your boundary.

 

Another Go to the front view and project a line to the 3D surfaces. Then project that to a 2D Place above and then trim to make a closed boundary.

 

HTH

[Colin Gilchrist]

Any surface that you add would be "cut" by the Opti-Rough paths. This is due to them not supporting Check Surfaces.

 

Use 2D Chain of wireframe to describe the material boundary. Place it in "Z" above your part, and the path will use that to calculate the material.

[Skyline]

Thanks for all suggestions. If I'm understanding it correctly the proposed solutions are in-effect creating 2D boundaries as projections from 3D surfaces? 

 

The issue I'm having is that the 2D boundaries change w.r.t Z levels, which is why I'm hoping to use surfaces as containment (which SurfCAM readily supports). Are there such options?

 

See Image

[Skyline]

So I created a boundary from the outside profile of the material stock, however, it generates alot of air motion cuts which I'm having trouble resolving. 

[Colin Gilchrist]

Oh, I get what you are asking. Create surfaces that represent the leftover material. The create a Stock Model from those surfaces. Finally, use Opti-Rest to machine only where there is material left...

[Skyline]

FYI. 3D-Wire in magenta represents the stock model. 

[Skyline]

Colin,

 

Thanks for the advice. Starting to look more like what I require. Only issue now is when importing STL file into the workspace, it is rotated and translated way off where it should be related. Any suggestions on resolving this?

[jlw™]

Use silhouett boundary on the stl then click on the resulting geo to translate it.

[jlw™]

Why not just use stock model from the get go? you can then save it from verify and it will be in the proper location when imported.

[jlw™]

or use wcs and just dance around one stock model.

 

can you upload a file?

[Skyline]

jlw, thanks for the advice. Saving the stock model by way of verify was able to orient and locate the part exactly. 

 

Sorry, cannot share the file, sensitive nature. 

 

Thanks for everyone's input

 

Cheers