topic Re: Split hole feature sets in two? in PowerMill Forum

Split hole feature sets in two?

johnc4668 — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 18:15:29 GMT

When creating a hole in hole feature sets, is it possible to split a hole in half so when the second setup happens the holes will meet with through hole selected? Basically i want to chop the hole in half to machine it from both sides. Right now im just dividing the hole depth in half and using a user defined depth under drilling toolpath

see pic

Re: Split hole feature sets in two?

DanielMolloy — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 20:22:36 GMT

Hi @johnc4668

I have had to do this in the past, its a bit of a workaround but how I did it was to create two hole feature sets that are both for the same hole. called one top and one bottom, from there I could right click on each one, select edit holes and then change the depth of the top one to half the depth of the hole, then do the same with bottom one and also change the hole axis as well so that it machines from the other side.

Might be a pain in the neck if you have a lot to do but that's how i got over this problem.

If you need I can put you together some screenshot of how to do this.

Re: Split hole feature sets in two?

Jonathan_Artiss19 — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 21:18:30 GMT

Why not use a user defined depth in the toolpath, then copy the featureset, reverse direction and do the same from the other side.

Re: Split hole feature sets in two?

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 21:25:58 GMT

Create a hole cap and shift it down half way, when you run your feature macros it should split it in two,

Re: Split hole feature sets in two?

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:38:05 GMT

Test it (require active featureset)

FUNCTION MAIN { IF NOT entity_exists('featureset','') { RETURN } STRING Holes0=entity('featureset','').Name STRING HolesTop=$Holes0+'_Top' STRING HolesBottom=$Holes0+'_Bottom' IF entity_exists('featureset',$HolesTop) { $HolesTop=new_entity_name('featureset',$HolesTop) } IF entity_exists('featureset',$HolesBottom) { $HolesBottom=new_entity_name('featureset',$HolesBottom) } COPY FEATURESET ; RENAME FEATURESET # $HolesBottom COPY FEATURESET ; RENAME FEATURESET # $HolesTop EDIT FEATURESET $HolesBottom HOLES REVERSE CALL HalfDepth($HolesTop) CALL HalfDepth($HolesBottom) ACTIVATE Featureset $Holes0 } FUNCTION HalfDepth(STRING H1) { ACTIVATE Featureset $H1 EDIT FEATURESET $h1 HOLES EXPLODE ENTITY fs=entity('featureset',$H1) FOREACH h IN components($fs) { EDIT FEATURESET ; select $h.Name REAL Depth=($h.Top-$H.Bottom)/2 EDIT FEATURESET $H1 FEATURE SELECTED COMPONENT SELECTED DEPTH $Depth } }

Re: Split hole feature sets in two?

DanielMolloy — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:41:05 GMT

Hi @Anonymous,

This is cool, i needed this a few months ago!