3D Surface - Face Selection (New feature) [Merged]

[Russ4262]

ping

Morning, Sir.
Just wanted to offer some ideas to help solve some of your cutting needs on this V-shape with a slot at the bottom - using 3D Surface

• Selecting the internal vertical faces of the notch is not necessary. They have no effect on the 2D cut area created from the face selection.
• Strategy: Select the two V angle sides and the bottom of the slot. Set the depth to the bottom of the V angle sides. This will clear the bulk of the shape, leaving only the notch to be cleared.
• Select only the bottom face of the notch and setup the 3D Surface operation, lowering the Start Depth down to the bottom of the V angle sides. Run the operation and change the `CutPatternAngle` to 90 degrees. This gives the single line path down the middle of the slot to clear it.
• Yes, a combination of 3D Surface and other 2.5D ops is a great solution for some scenarios.

Appreciate your feedback.
Russ

[freman]

Thanks for the tips. These 3D tools are quite complex in what they offer and how to get them to do what is required so the expert advice is very welcome.

Select the two V angle sides and the bottom of the slot. Set the depth to the bottom of the V angle sides. This will clear the bulk of the shape

Clearly CutPatternAngle=0 will run up and down the V and will not produce a good finish. I need to run along the V, ie CutPatternAngle=90.


BTW, why doesn't changing "DropAutterDirection" seem to do anything. I don't even seem to be able to find it in tree view. Is it redundant ? Was this replaced by a more flexible CutPatternAngle but remains as dead wood in the UI ?

[EDIT]
OK, I've updated to current HEAD. The glitches I was seeing seem to be completely fixed which is great. Also I may have been misreading the end-views. I have boundary enforcement false to ensure it runs to the end of V , and it seems it was dipping outside the part and this oddly exactly matched the V surface. It now dips further which made it clearer what was happening.


since the sim does not cater for CS tools, I'll just have to cut some metal to see whether it is producing correct paths.

One defect I can see is that it is offering conventional/climb but cutting the same direction on both sides of the V, ie only one is correct. If I just select LHS to eliminate the conflicting requirements, it still produces the same (incorrect) paths. Flipping conventional/climb does not seem to change the direction of cut.

[freman]

Not sure that countersink paths are coming out right.

The flank of the V is about 12mm horizontally, these paths ( 8mm CS, 80% stepover ) seem to be counting on the full width of 8mm, not the half width of the inclined edge of the tool.

I thought ball and CS were supported, am I mistaken?

[Giulio Buccini]

Is the 3D Surface command of the Path WB available in the development version 0.20?
I cannot find it the list of the available buttons...

[herbk]

Is the 3D Surface command of the Path WB available in the development version 0.20?
I cannot find it the list of the available buttons...

Yes it is...
It's at an drop down menue together with other 3D Ops , - but you have to have the experimental features enabled.

[Giulio Buccini]

Hi.
I have added the "EnableExperimentalFeatures" by using the Parameter Editor, and set it to "True".
After restarting Freecad the command is still not available...

[Giulio Buccini]

I also added the opencamlib repository :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-community/ppa
sudo apt-get update

and then installed it by using the Synaptic Package Manager. Here the current situation:

Selection_7546.jpg (80.37 KiB) Viewed 1901 times

As I can see the version for my Ubuntu 16.04 is not listed here... maybe that is the problem?

[Giulio Buccini]

SOLVED!

Seems that what I have done above is correct, but I forgot to execute the step 3 reported in the documentation:

1. Properly install OpenCamLib.
2. Enable Experimental Features for the Path Workbench.
3. Check Edit → Preferences... → Path → Advanced → Enable OCL dependent features.



Now the commands appears in the toolbar:

Selection_7548.jpg (33.29 KiB) Viewed 1822 times

At the moment I'm just struggling a little with the tools still having the type "undefined", but the 3D surface command definitely works. Not still tested the Waterline.
(To solve the "undefined" problem, see the last post in this thread - make your mods at the tools, save the file, close it and reopen it again.)

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OS: Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS (XFCE/xfce)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.25943 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: a65464b722a846bd2999aa2fecdff1132b15b297
Python version: 3.9.7
Qt version: 5.12.9
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.5.2
Locale: English/United States (en_US)