debugging spiral pattern in AreaOp paths

[freman]

Hi,

where is the problem with spiral paths ?

This is the path option I would chose to use most of the time , if only it worked.

Others have said it is known to be unreliable and as I have posted elsewhere it often leaves pillar of uncut material in the centre of some volume which it should have cleared.

Are the issues with freecad or is it , as often seems the case, caused by one of the libraries used.

I would like to see whether I can fix some of these issues if anyone can help with knowledge of where the problems lie.

thx.

[freman]

I have just amended the title which was unclear. What I'm interested in fixing is the spiral pattern option on AreaOp paths.

At the moment it does some pretty crazy toing and froing which leaves messy machining finish. I'll upload an example file later but I'm sure most here are familiar with the problem. It also frequently leaves a pillar of uncut material in the middle.

I've been digging around the code to get an idea of what is involved in doing this. It seems to rely mainly on libArea, Heeks and clipper.

Is all this now an integral part of FreeCAD, or are they still independently developed libraries which are kept up to date with upstream. In other words, is there any point in suggesting improvements to this code here, or is that going to get a reply that I need to take it up with "upsteam" devs.

So far I'm suspecting there are problems in Reverse and setting direction of spans which seem to flip in an almost arbitrary way.

If anyone has any ideas where the problems lie, it may save some time.
thanks.

[freman]

Wow, this code-base really is what the French would call a "usine a gas".

a bunch of US CCurves , German Kurve:Kurves and French BRepAdaptor_Curves , all bolted together with a truck load of multilingual manifolds, flanges and Boost::gaffer_tape.

Thankfully it's all pretty clearly written and a fair amount of comments but it's a nightmare to get an idea of what is doing what.

Time for stiff drink and some carbohydrates. This may take quite some time ...