slow Surface High Speed toopath regeneration

[Jaz]

I have a fairly large part (120" x 80") I am trying to program.  Anytime I use one of the SHS toolpaths it takes several hours to generate or regenerate a toolpath.  Most of the time is taken up by "Offsetting surfaces...".  What can I do to speed this up? I am using MC2018 but did not notice any difference when I tried MC2020.  Tolerances are pretty tight for the finishing operations but I could not tell how much that is affecting this offsetting surfaces thing, I know it makes quite a difference when MC gets around to calculating steps.  Would it help to drive against surfaces instead of solids?

My computer is not terribly slow, I can regenerate the test file in about 3 minutes.

(I cannot share the file. Please don't ask)

[JParis]

3 minutes ago, Jaz said:

Would it help to drive against surfaces instead of solids?

It can.....depends what you have selected

If you've selected the entire solid and there are faces that are not part of the cuts, try removing them and selecting ONLY the faces that are necessary to the cuts..

 

[Jaz]

I do select only pertinent faces. That is still 2622 drive surfaces and 349 check

[JParis]

Sight unseen I'm just whistling Dixie here but..

Any way to reduce or break it up into different cuts to make it more manageable? 

You could try surfaces but I'm not certain that would play a big part..

You say it's a tight tolerance, are your numbers valid?  Too tight?

:after thought:

Have you checked your solid for bad faces?

 

[Jaz]

The one I am doing right now went from giving up after an hour to done in 10 minutes by changing wall stock and floor stock both to 0 instead of 0 and .030

Tolerance is .001 total, .0004 cut tolerance

The model has 3 self intersecting faces, which I avoid using. They are tiny, I just skip them.

I had not thought about cutting it in sections. I bet that would work for me.