Community Resource - Expressions list

[Rob_Lockwood]

(duplicating from the HSM forum)

I'm not sure if this is available elsewhere, but I finally decided to do some intern work and cobble a list together of what I believe to be all of the expressions available within each operation. A direct link can be found below, and it looks like the forum will even let me embed the table here. This is output from HSMWorks, so YMMV on the Fusion side. It's likely that this will fall out of date, so perhaps someone from the Autodesk team can clone this someplace more visible, and where it can be maintained internally?

https://airtable.com/shrggXZ4wpuGUiN3w/tblJ9PHav1NwMmqMz/viw09jWqXAR0JmPPM

[al.whatmough]

thanks for sharing @Rob_Lockwood

@mike.mattera can we get this on the help page?

Cheers,

AL

[jeff.pek]

Hi Rob -

How did you create this list? I really like it, and we may be able to do something to provide/update something like it.

I'm a little nervous about putting it into the documentation, due to the likelihood of it getting out-of-date, as you say.

Thanks,

  Jeff

[Rob_Lockwood]

HSMWorks actually has a nice little function, where right clicking in an operation gives the ability to 'copy parameters as text', and it made fairly quick work of this. I'm not sure there's a parallel function within Fusion, or Inventor. Saving as a template should provide the same output, but the formatting isn't quite as clean, and i'm not 100% sure it's a complete dataset (nor am I sure what I posted here is, I didn't do much checking!)

Still, perhaps as part of QC it's easy enough to output a generic template for each operation and cull the data in an automated fashion?

[NYC_CNC]

Yes!  Thanks Rob!

[mike.mattera]

@al.whatmough Well anything can be documented. But I'm not quite sure what this is. Why we would want to document it.  Where I'd put it (category wise) or of it's even the same in Fusion. But I can tell you it looks like it would be difficult to keep up to date. This looks more like API stuff,

[jeff.pek]

OK, thanks for the explanation. I guess I wasn't aware of that little tidbit.

I'm sure it would be that hard to do this for the other systems.

Do be aware that the parameter lists and expressions ARE DIFFERENT between HSMWorks, Fusion, and Inventor, so definitely use this with care!

Also keep in mind that the parameters' expressions can change depending on the values of others, so what you're getting there is a snapshot in time of those expressions, which are probably the defaults.

Jeff

[Rob_Lockwood]

---

@jeff.pek wrote:

OK, thanks for the explanation. I guess I wasn't aware of that little tidbit.

I'm sure it would be that hard to do this for the other systems.

Do be aware that the parameter lists and expressions ARE DIFFERENT between HSMWorks, Fusion, and Inventor, so definitely use this with care!

Also keep in mind that the parameters' expressions can change depending on the values of others, so what you're getting there is a snapshot in time of those expressions, which are probably the defaults.

Jeff

---

Yes, definitely. I tried to do my best to keep the data 'vanilla' and free of any of my customizations, but there's likely stuff that ISN'T the defaults, and are rather my stored info. Realistically, this should get everything but the 'expression name' and description pulled out, then categorized into places where each expression is valid (both which operations, and which softwares)

It would be a few minutes work if I had the data in a clean format, but I don't feel like figuring out how to clean it up on my own this morning. Maybe in the future i'll make it better 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi John,

We are a fellow machine shop and have just started using Fusion recently, I have found your videos extremely useful and they were a big reason we chose Fusion over other products.

Just watched your latest Fusion Friday on Turning and was pleased to see you have a very similar Lathe Template to ours.

One of the few things that I have not been able to default is the front stock offset for doing the backside chamfer (before parting) I have been trying to add an expression in here for (say):-

-1mm*(ModelLength-2mm) but can't seem to get anything to work, any idea John/anyone else on this one? Was hoping this is possible and I am just not getting the technicals correct.

Thanks,

Regards

Justin

[Rob_Lockwood]

John actually reached out to me before posting that video, and I'm sad to say.. I don't think a parameter exists to get the parts length within an operation; I still haven't really sat down and tried anything there, but the solution I came up with (after the video was live) was to rather just pull the grooving tools width into the offset, which leaves you just needing to pop into the operation and select the back face of the part for confinement.

I can say, in the very near future, some changes to the way confinement is handled should be implemented (they might even be there already in some inventor/hsmw builds) that will solve this in a much cleaner way.

[Rob_Lockwood]

It does look like "partZhigh" and "partZlow" are available within an operation, and the combination of those two should get you the part length; I just haven't confirmed whether that's actually correct or not.

[Anonymous]

@NYC_CNC @Anonymous

Still would take some testing to figure out the exact combination of goodness, but surfaceZHigh and surfaceZLow definitely can be combined to get the result you're after. For instance, surfaceZHigh-surfaceZLow should always result in the length of the part; I think surfaceZLow is simply the integer you need here, though.

(I mistakenly mentioned "partZ" expressions previously, which don't exist.

[Anonymous]

Cheers Rob,

will play about with it next time I get in front of a PC

[Anonymous]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for this, it works perfectly!

I just used the expression surfaceZLow + 2mm in the front offset box and this will generate a toolpath for any chamfer or radius on the backside upto 2mm (which will cover 99% of cases for us).

I am sure your expressions list will prove very useful to users looking to set up Templates and defaults in a similar way to this, I would have had no idea what surfaceZLow was otherwise.

Thanks again Rob

@NYC_CNC get that Template updated!

[Anonymous]

Rob, thanks for putting the work in to create this list from HSM works!  One tip i came across that may or may not be known is that if you hold down the SHIFT key before you move the cursor over a numerical entry box in the toolpath parameters you will get the parameter name, defaults, value etc.  Also when you edit an expression and start typing it will pull up a list.  So even if guessing you should get pretty close to the right expression.  

I looked up a few in your HSM List(which is over a year old but this thread pops up in a search at the top) and have seen that some are different so using the Shift key trick should help get users close that are looking for an expression list for Fusion and find this thread.

Below are some screen shots from holding down the SHIFT key over various inputs in an Adaptive toolpath.