There have been some changes to Engrave which have gone mostly unnoticed. The changes are young and probably full of holes/bugs so we haven't made a big fuzz about it - but it seems they are starting to show up in use cases.
Engrave now supports arbitrary depths including multiple passes with StepDown. This might be a non-feature, but there it is.
it is no longer necessary to create a separate Job for engraving a ShapeString. The engraving op can be added to an existing job.
You can engrave individual letters of a ShpaeString. Select the face of a letter and press "Add". This is helpful if you have a string and want to engrave individual letters differently (in different Engrave ops).
You can use any edge of the base model for engraving - this is handy if you just want to make a simple slot/groove. It results in a single pass of the tool along the edge(s) - please don't ask to make this into a slotting tool, that will be a different op.
Like a ShapeString you can also use a sketch as a base object for an Engrave op. So if you have a pretty picture in a sketch (or imported an SVG as a sketch), you can engrave it onto your part
I think those are all the things we did to Engrave - well, other than me introducing some mandatory bugs - goes without saying ....
PS: I fully expect to see some logo engraving going on here, with pictures of real world machining results ...
Like a ShapeString you can also use a sketch as a base object for an Engrave op. So if you have a pretty picture in a sketch (or imported an SVG as a sketch), you can engrave it onto your part
I have tried this with a circle (inspired from another topic) and didn't succeed yet. I have observed the following:
There has to exist a solid, otherwise no job can be created. In most cases this is natural, however, if a sketch cannot be padded it still might be engraved.
I could select the sketch and add it to the engraving op, but no path was generated. I tried the following
- Sketch on top level, extruded in Part WB
- Sketch in body, padded in PartDesign WB
You are correct about the base object for a Job - it always requires a solid model. The only exception (for historical reasons and backward compatibility) is the ShapeString.
