topic Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves in Fusion Manufacture Forum

3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

infoEMRZJ — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 18:57:16 GMT

I've tried looking for other posts with similar problems, and haven't had much luck.

I'm using a ball endmill to add a chamfer to a part that has some oddball angles. In a couple locations, there are ton of extra wasteful moves, and I'm trying to figure out how to reduce them, as they add a ton of time.

I've added a sample part with a small chunk of my part to demonstrate what I'm trying to do.
Reducing the tolerance obviously helps, but this is a finishing pass, and I'd rather not reduce the tolerance.

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

HughesTooling — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:21:47 GMT

When I open your file all reference selections are lost in the setup and all ops. Can you test your file and fix the selection please?

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

seth.madore — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:23:56 GMT

Oh good, I thought I had done something on my end, what with all the Fusion builds and all the other stuff I've been involved with lately...

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

seth.madore — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:27:27 GMT

How about a Flow(Preview) toolpath?

Turn on the Flow(Preview) toolpath in your Preferences and select the surfaces you want to machine. Since the holes aren't in yet, you could either make a Patch surface that blocks them up, or duplicate the model and delete the holes

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

infoEMRZJ — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:32:48 GMT

That's super strange. I don't understand why it's happening, or how to fix it.

I tried downloading the file from my previous post and importing it, updating all of the selections and toolpaths, saving, exporting, then re-importing, and it lost all of that information.

Any ideas?

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

infoEMRZJ — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:45:57 GMT

That does look quite a bit better.
I can't get my flow toolpath to look as nice as yours though, and I'm not sure why.

It gives me a "one or more passes were partially skipped" warning, but doesn't tell me why.

It also does some weird stuff down in that inside radius

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

infoEMRZJ — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:48:01 GMT

Tried with a different file, this one appears to keep my selections.

It also has that flow toolpath

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

seth.madore — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 19:57:04 GMT

It's your Surface Triangulation Tolerance. Right click on the toolpath and select "Compare and Edit". Type in "Triang" and change this to *.05

After that, recalculate your toolpath

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

infoEMRZJ — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 20:09:04 GMT

Alright, that helps, thank you.

Unfortunately on the full sized part (I'm not able to share the file with the whole part), this flow toolpath makes a ton of rapid moves, and ends up taking like 25% longer than the 3d contour path

edit: Is it possible the machine time estimator is incorrect? It seems odd that this would be slower, looks like the 3d contour path has similar number of rapid moves

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

seth.madore — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 20:07:43 GMT

Can you share your file privately?
Right click on the file in the Data Panel and select "Share Link". Copy that link and email it to me:

seth DOT madore AT autodesk DOT com

Re: 3d contour toolpath creating tons of extra wasteful moves

infoEMRZJ — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 22:43:28 GMT

I sent you an email a while ago. Since then, I've tried adding patches to the holes, and the flow toolpath doesn't seem to recognize them at all (yes, I selected those patch surfaces in the geometry tab).