CAM Workflow Improvements

[LibertyMachine]

As an active participant of the CAM forum, I would say that hand's down, the most common problem we see is that of "My post failed, it said something about tool orientation"

This always comes down to one thing: People dive right into programming their part, but they never bothered to do a Setup. So when their tool is trying to mill along the Z axis, they think the solution is to turn on Tool Orientation. This is clearly wrong and the tooltip tells you what it's for, but apparently that is ignored or misunderstood.

I propose something along the lines of these options:

1) Grey out all the toolpath icons until a Setup is performed.

2) If that's not desired by the community, perhaps clicking an operation could prompt a pop-up window informing you that you haven't established your WCS yet and would you like to? This box MUST have a button to click for more information, perhaps linking to a very short video or text explaining what the WCS is for and why you need to set it up before programming

I mean, we all love the easy padding of kudos and "Your answer was accepted as solution" but I'd rather just see the community not even hit that problem in the first place

What are your thoughts @Steinwerks @HughesTooling @al.whatmough ?

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

YES!

[HughesTooling]

At the moment anyone with the standard version of Fusion has to enable Tool Orientation in preferences under preview. I think all users should be made to enable it, if you don't know what it's for there's a good chance someone's not going to enable it by mistake. 

As for clicking a toolpath when there's no setup, perhaps doing that should open the setup dialog and no clicking OK until at least the Z Axis is set.

Mark

[LibertyMachine]

@HughesTooling not disagreeing with your statement, as it didn't occur to me that you had to enable something to obtain Tool Orientation.

I went into Preview to turn off the Tool Orientation. Back in the CAM workspace I am still able to to enable the Tool Orientation.

Now, it may still be the case where the post will fail and produce this error, but I'm curious what your thoughts are

It (Tool Orientation) still working may be due to me having the Fusion Ultimate license? 

[HughesTooling]

Yes it's enabled by your licence and as the 30 day demo and start up are the Ultimate version it's enabled for new users. I think it would be better if there was a setting in the preferences for everyone and have some info on what it's for and a link to the help.

Thinking about it a bit more why not have options for Lathe and Waterjet so you don't have to clutter up the toolbar with features you don't need.

Mark

[LibertyMachine]

Well, if it's automatically enabled for everyone with a student/hobbyist license.....man, that's a lot of people that "don't know what they don't know"

I agree with your idea of requiring everyone to manually enable tool orientation somewhere obvious so it's an informed choice (as much as it can be)

I still think there needs to be something to guide the new person into properly establishing a setup. Not sure if that answer lies in the education side or constricted options side. I think one possible step is to remove the default "Model Orientation" choice and move the default to "Pick Z and X axis"

I've also long wondered why Fusion didn't support more toolbar customization. Every CAD or CAM system I've encountered permitted some method of deactivating unused toolbars.....

[Steinwerks]

As @LibertyMachine and I have discussed before, I think the workflow needs to change so that the user is forced to create a Setup first before any machining operations. Defaults frequently do not follow manufacturing workflow, just design orientation.

[LibertyMachine]

Right! And the regularity that we encounter these stumbling blocks among the very new people only reinforces the idea that the flow needs some adjustments. We only see the very small fraction of the Fusion users who actually make it to the forum to ask a question. If Instagram is any indication, there is a HUGE segment of users who don't even know the value of the Forums...That's a lot of people struggling pointlessly. Let's improve at least this small segment and help retain members

[daniel_lyall]

@LibertyMachine I see the same on CNCZONE, number 1 sounds good.

the amount of people who post questions on fusion360 in cnczone is not that high not like IG, but there is a big problem on cnczone, there are a couple of A holes that post misinformation, at least twice a week I am going in and correcting people, or just saying go ask this on the fusion forum and 90% of the time it's for one reason they need to RTFManual.

the tooltips should be lock so they stay on for a few weeks as well and give more info with links to the learning pages.

[HughesTooling]

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 @daniel_lyall wrote:

the tooltips should be lock so they stay on for a few weeks as well and give more info with links to the learning pages.

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@LibertyMachine brought this up before, what's needed is the same help that's available in the model workspace.

Here's an example clicking the "i" opens a brief description and the More Information button open the help page.

Mark

[RandyKopf]

I like your thinking.

But I would even take it one step further... Add a deliberate switch in Setup that makes you choose what type of Setup your doing. 3Axis, 4Axis or 5Axis. Why? If you chose 3 Axis and complete your WCS definition then when someone is creating operations Tool Orientation can be greyed out as the Operation defaults to the WCS defined in Setup. The magic is you can't accidently define a conflicting tool orientation. And that was your point as its one of the most common mistakes.

The reason this makes sense to me is I do 5 Axis programming in Mastercam all day long and I am very comfortable using WCS vs Operation Coordinates. But once on a 3 Axis part I was over defining things and @HughesTooling pointed it out once. I did not need to define the Tool Orientation but just let it inherit it from the Setup. 

[mike.mattera]

Fusion creates a generic Setup whenever you create your first toolpath. It has a basic rectangular stock definition with XY zero at the center (Z at the top).  I created a 2D contour toolpath, and Fusion created a Milling Setup. Not sure what it will do if you create a Turning toolpath first. It might create a Turning Setup. Haven't checked yet.

There are important advantages to creating a Setup first, but graying out all the toolpath options will only create a different type of frustration. You can create toolpaths without a Setup. So this generic Setup should solve a portion of the problems.

As for documentation and videos.... If they didn't take the time to learn how to do a toolpath the right way, how can we make anyone read/watch any documentation.   But here is a small sample of things that would solve the users question/problem regarding Setup.

Job Setup - General

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-AC4E6A7A-6A9A-45F3-9CEE-AC6BA29AB49A

Job Setup -Milling

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-3F87766C-DD96-4D5B-8C4D-D487C26041A1

Job Setup -Turning

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-F5470B46-7FCF-40BC-A868-0A3CA69A12E8

Certainly pointing users to these lessons would be beneficial.

Let me know if I missed anything.

Thanks for your input,

[LibertyMachine]

It's the automatic creation of the Setup that is actually the issue. At the bare minimum, I'd argue that it should bump you right into the prompt for "Select Z and X axis" dialog box. Currently, it sets the WCS based on Model Orientation, and past experience has shown that this is not always correct, especially when bringing models in from other CAD systems. And then we fall into the Tool Orientation confusion as I lay out in my IdeaStation post

I mean no disrespect to the large segment of the Fusion community. The issue is this; the price point (free) has opened up a dangerous module to a very inexperienced crowd. I'm talking CAM. Now anybody can program and declare themselves a machinist without having any clue whatsoever what they are doing. There needs to be some guidance so at least they aren't falling on their face right out of the gate, imo

[Steinwerks]

If I hadn't been eating lunch I might've beaten @LibertyMachine to the punch. As it stands, we are in lockstep in this idea (discussed with @al.whatmough previously) that creating a toolpath should kick the user into a Setup. Stock definitions can be absolutely critical, as well as part orientation. If the user defaults do not correctly represent what they are about to machine it can and will result in - bare minimum - broken tooling and/or scrapped parts. If they catch this, they have to regenerate toolpaths anyway, and possible remove Tool Orientation settings and re-define geometry.

The Setup is the bedrock of any process and if it's wrong, the whole thing will be wrong.

/rant

[al.whatmough]

@porsbym  and I have been talking about this one.

It's good to see a discussion happening here.

[HughesTooling]

@mike.mattera Here's a quick screencast of what your average beginner is doing when they're not creating a setup first. Clicking an op when there's no setup in the document should force the user through the setup first.

Mark

[mike.mattera]

I like the idea of it being more interactive. So when the user creates his first toolpath you would get something like this....

"Fusion is defining a stock boundary for you. Please select a Line/Face that represents the X axis direction and a Line/Face that represents the Z axis direction. This will set the proper orientation for your toolpath. In the future, you may want to define your Setup before creating any toolpaths."

Mike Mattera

[LibertyMachine]

@mike.mattera Yes, absolutely! Interactive, gets the job done, people start off on the proper footing (although the order would be reversed, as Setups look for the Z axis first)

[mike.mattera]

You're right @LibertyMachine . I reversed the order. As long as we add the input to the correct field, it would work. As for trapping the condition (is there a Setup) and making it interactive, I wouldn't know about doing that. I'm sure someone will chime in though.

Mike Mattera

[keqingsong]

Hey all, great conversation here. Marking this as Future Consideration as something we'll plan for. We need to get our ducks in a row before we can commit to this being accepted. More to come. 

[LibertyMachine]

@keqingsong Sure! In the meanwhile, I think I'll just tag @keqingsong @al.whatmough @mike.mattera every time someone comes into the CAM Forums with a Tool Orientation issue