In case you have not been keeping up with some of the advancements here in the PathWB, I am here to tell you about a few. There are exciting improvements being made to a number of the PathWB tools. I have been working on the 3D Surface op, and recently the Path Pocket Shape op.
Much of the discussion for the 3D Surface op improvements has been taking place in an adjacent topic, CNC Lathe and 4th-axis milling.... Considering the length of many topics here on the forums, I understand that some of the new developments can be buried in the depths of the forum pages. Fret not! FYI, the 3D Surface op has been undergoing some major changes. Although these are not committed to the master branch of FreeCAD, you can still access them and try them out. Feedback is greatly appreciated.
The most recent version of the 3D Surface op script can be found at a posting in the aforementioned topic. Also, additional background information and feature details is in the discussion leading up to that post. In short, the best features in development for 3D Surface are the multi-pass (aka layering or step-down) support and rotational (4th-axis) scans.
If you have not toggled on the experimental features in the PathWB, perhaps the new developments in the area of 4th-axis availability will change your mind. We will be glad to help you install the available scripts for testing. Attached are a couple of images to demonstrate what is available - or at least what we are aiming for.
If you find a bug, please let me know. I'll work to remove any found... As far as I am capable.
UPDATE: 2019-04-30 This topic is also related to PR #2114.
UPDATE: 2019-05-02 Script, and future updates will be attached here, rather than aforementioned topic at link above. Script updated to Rev. 3u Usable: Made changes to mesh generation, suggested by @sliptonic in Gitter.im chat today.
UPDATE: 2019-05-11 Script updated to latest PR #2159, Rev. 3v Usable
UPDATE: 2019-05-14 Script updated to Rev. 3w Testing. @LMH identified path error on terminal side of planar OCL Dropcutter scan. Issue addressed in this update.
Installation:
- download the attached script
- navigate to your FreeCAD binary folder
- navigate to 'Mod/Path/PathScripts'
- rename your current PathSurface.py script - to save should you wish to revert
- paste the downloaded version into the same folder
- rename the downloaded version to the same as the original, PathSurface.py
- Re-start FreeCAD