Programmatically converting an array of cylinders to holes

[john.ballardZ3L45]

Hi,

Objective:  to mill/spot drill a qr code onto a flat surface.

I have modified the QRCoder Addin by Patrick Rainsberry @prainsberry to produce cylinders rather than boxes.  I'm having a mental block how to make a solid with holes rather than the array of cylinders.  I'd like to do this programmatically, but instructions how to 'cut' these cylinders into a block would also help me. 

I started by trying to import a svg of the qrcode into my model, but where the circles touched, the outlines merged and no longer looked like holes.  I could not find a way to make a CAM program this way.

Thanks in advance.

[BrianEkins · Accepted solution]

You can easily cut these from a solid block to create a block with "holes" by using the "Combine" command. To do this, draw a box that overlaps the cylinders, and run the "Combine" command. Choose the box as the target body and then you can use a window select to select all of the cylinders as the tool bodies. Choose the "Cut" operation and whether you want to create a new component and keep the cylinders or not. At the end, you should have a box with holes. I would expect the hole recognizer in Manufacturing to be able to quickly find all of them and then you can use them as input to an operation to machine the holes. No API programming is needed.

[john.ballardZ3L45]

That was easy - thanks!