Pattern More Than One Operation

[Anonymous]

The pattern option in CAM will only pattern one operation (drlling etc.) at a time. If I am cutting 50 parts I have to select 50 different 2D contours, or 50 pockets. I would like to be able to make all the operations on one part, then make a pattern to fill up my material. If I use the pattern option I would have to make a new pattern for each operation.

Thanks everybody who reads this!

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I think the current patterning system is horrible. Here is my idea in the idea station. You should vote for it as well.
Unfortunately I don't think enough people care abotu this to get anyones attention and when I brought it up in the forums AD just insisted I was doing it wrong and that I should do it there way.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/ideastation-request-a-feature-or/fix-cam-patterning/idi-p/5798652
You can probably find that thread as well.
There is supposed to be component patterning which might be an option for you if it's up and working now. Otherwise you need to pattern in model and then tell it to machine each part.
So much for CAD reinvented.

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

I think big part of the patterning problems is lack of knowledge about the works of them. And how you can use them.

Because you can have more than one operation per pattern now. It only shows the first when you select the pattern, but it does pattern everything that is in the pattern folder.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

While I admit I need to get more comfortable with the awful way it's done because I don't imagine it's going to change that doesn't mean I think it's good. The way it's done now your pattern is not factored into the stock. 
For people like me who rely on manual tool changes I have to have a setup for each tool change. Yes i can fix it so I don't have to with a little time and money but it's a non issue until it comes to patterning. 
I still completely believe it would be way better if a pattern was a parent feature that you could apply to operations. Then in that operation the patterns would apply to your stock, would be visible and could be applied to multiple operations. 
I do all my patterning in model because it's just better in every way. It applies to the stock, it's easier to visualize, it can be applied to multiple operations if say I need to say machine the top and then the bottom. The one thing that really sucks about it though is that I need to select the same features of each part which is massively inconvienent if doing a lot of patterns. 
It's just sad that model based patterning is just so much better than the CAM implimentation of patterning. 

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

@yoshimitsuspeed

Why do you program a whole new setup for each tool?

That mainly is your problem I guess.

If you do that because of the outputted code we can edit your post processor for you.

Because that really shouldn't be necesarry. 

[kb9ydn]

We went through this in detail in another thread.  Creating a new setup for each tool was sort of a workaround because of a combination of the the way Fusion worked at the time (no component patterns) and having a machine that requires manual tool changes.  If component patterns are working the way they are supposed to (I haven't checked recently), then it should be possible to make your part patterns on the CAD side so that the CAM side uses them for stock setup and tool path duuplication.

The thing about only showing the tool paths for the first patterned operation is highly confusing I think.  I understand that showing the tool paths for patterns with lots of operations slows down the graphics, but there still needs to be some visual indication of what has been patterned.

C|

[yoshimitsuspeed]

@Laurens-3DTechDraw

I have a small home built machine with an ER20 spindle so I have to do a manual tool change and zero the tool for each toolchange.
Yes I know there are workarounds to avoid this but I haven't had time or money to impliment them.
That is really only part of the picture though. It honestly does not make any sense to me that in any situation it would be better to have the pattern be a child of a setup. It makes no sense that the pattern isn't applied to the stock. It makes no sense that you cannot see the pattern when setting it up or measure between two patterned parts. Even better would be a CAM specific measuring tool that when two bodies were selected it would tell you how far apart they were at the closest point.

Beyond the mention of it I still haven't heard anything about component based machining but looking up  it's descripiion on the HSMworks page and a vid of it used in SW it doesn't seem like it would be the right solution for most pattern machining. Very valuable at times but for most pattern machining it doesn't seem ideal. It also doesn't show anything about incorperating it into your stock prep or anything like that.
Even though I have learned a good bit about how to utilize what is currently available since I started my idea linked above I still believe that a solution like that would be much better where you create a pattern that is not only visible but where you can actually measure distance between parts so you know you have acceptable clearance then that pattern is applied to your setup where it is included in the stock.
Then if you want to flip the whole pattern over and machine the other side you make a new setup, change your origin and machine away knowing that spacing and all other pattern settings are identical to your previous setup. Now there are too many variables. It would be way too easy to mess one up and machine your bottom pattern slightly differently to the top.
Again what is the benefit to the way it is now? Is there one single thing that makes it superior to the method I describe?
Or is it just the way it has always been so it is the way it is get used to it?

[Anonymous]

Component patterns work fine as far as I know.

Looks like I just never went far enough into the toolpath pattern function. It only show the pattern of the first path but if I simulate the entire setup all operations are patterned and it looks like it will be faster as it will do all the operations on one part before moving to the next part, which is really nice. I would like to see all of the toolpaths displayed, and I haven't done a cut with this feature yet so I do not know if it actually works. I will test it out tonight and post again.

The CAM measuring tool would be excellent and would speed up set up time so I don't have to measure the part to determine the pattern spacing.

Sometimes I feel like Fusion was the first ever CAD/CAM software and we are figuring all these things out for the first time. Sadly we are not and literally every other CAM package has this down, as well as many other features.

[kb9ydn]

So I finally had a bit of time to mess with component patterns, and they do pretty much exactly what I would expect based on how they work in HSMWorks/HSMXpress.

The main thing is to pattern the component on the CAD side first.  I know this sounds weird, but Autodesk CAM was designed from the beginning to be integrated into a CAD system, so that it can take advantage of the tools that are already available.  Once you have the CAD pattern defined, you can setup the CAM job so that the stock sees all the parts to be machined.  Now if you do an adaptive operation it will know about the defined stock and all of the included parts.  When you go to make your tool paths that are common to all the parts, you make a CAM pattern folder to contain all the machining operations that you want patterned.  For the CAM pattern folder you select component pattern and pick the source part.  It then automatically knows that the source part was patterned and it creates tool paths for all parts in the CAD pattern.  Or if you want you can manually include or exclude certain parts as you need to.  You can also tell it to order the tool paths by tool used or by the operation.

If you want to be able to see the stock, you can make a CAD model of the stock (instead of using setup defined stock), set the appearance to glass so that it's transparent, and then use that solid for the stock on the setup.  It might sound like a lot of extra work but it's really not.  It's really very easy and quite powerful to use patterns this way.

Here's an example file I put together showing 3 different ways to make 10 of a single part.  I hope somebody finds it useful.

http://a360.co/1P7vRop

C|

[yoshimitsuspeed]

Yeah it works well enough.
I really don't like having the CAM patterns cluttering up the model environement or needing to roll back history to work with your single part then roll forward to do your CAM.

At least component patterning does apply the stock to all components so not sure why you would need to model it just to see it. You can also view the stock in simulate but again to find out if your spacing is acceptable or optimized requires making all the components with spacing, then going into CAM and making toolpaths, then jumping back into model to change spacing.

Yes it works but it still seems silly and less than ideal to me.

[colin.smith]

Unfortunately this idea did not get the support of the community and as such we will not be pursuing it. Please feel free to rework and resubmit this one down the road. Thanks for taking the time to submit your idea. Due to the low strategic fit, we have decided that we will not be pursuing this one at the given moment.