I have been now doing electrodes like this for the past 20 yrs. 1. the Z depths are the same as in the 3d -file. 2. toolpath calculation is the same as otherwise (fast) 3. I have made a main program which handles all the shifts when machining "sideways" (on Heidenhain). I just jot down the Z depth of a tool which always drops down to the same absolute height ( the reference point of my electrode holder ) and use that as an input for all the shifts. So every electrode height can be different and the sideways machining happens on the fly. 4 . I have to admit here that theoretically "cheating" diameters when the corner radius is 0 is not correct, but since the most I do is 0.3mm it has no bearing on the outcome. My tool range is 50 mm to 0.2mm (that would be 0.001 for a spark of 0.2 ) Gracjan

I modify the tool diameter and radius of the tool. if your spark gap is 0.3mm then D6 ball becomes D5.7 R2.85 and D6 sharp is D5.7 R0 . The neat thing about this is your Z depths correspond to what you have on the screen. I have another electrode holder which I can use to tilt the axis of the electrode 90. I can then rotate the electrode 90 degs allowing me to machine the electrodes in five planes planes altogether. When I machine the electrodes in the tileted position I add a shift away from the electode on my previous Z-axis which is equal to half my spark gap (0.15 in this case. Gracjan

Camaix the German reseller had a customer who wanted to machine submarine propellers with Mastercam . As it was not possible at that time (v. 9 ? ) They created a c-hook. The c-hook took on a life of it's own after that....also known as Moduleworks Gracjan

really lazy style offset would be to machine with a stock to leave 0.048....

that' s because if you have a curved surface , the offset value cannot go below a radius value of 0 ......

You actually need a sheet first as an input for thicken. It's what id does , takes a sheet and makes a solid out of it with a thickness.... Gracjan

Solids thicken ?

I have half a mold on my screen with some 3500 surfaces. Calculating a tool path using the solid as input ( a simple parallel tool path) takes 1 min 35 s. Machining the same part but the input is surfaces (create surfaces from solid ) takes only 14 secs. That's a 670% difference. Converting the solid to surfs takes 58 secs.... but you do it only once. You can guess how I am machining the other half I was wandering what is Your take on this. I would love to keep on machining solids , but the time penalty is quite steep Gracjan

Turn the grid on and set it to visible and give it a size of 50 x 50 mm, (for those living in the USA , Myanmar and Liberia 1 and 756/768 in. ) . From the pic included , at a glance you'll know that the plate is NOT the size of a house and that the tool plane I am using at the moment is bad for drawing 2d geo on the face of the blue plate . Picked it up from Gilberto in Portugal. Gracjan