Helical ramp contour down around outside contour of projection/silhouette of solid body.

[8560000]

I've been trying to figure out how to just helical ramp down the projection/silhouette of this part for two days now and I simply cant. Even with the wacky project tool in sketch it creates a million lines and if I individually select them as a chain even that doesn't help. See how it ramps down helically to that shelf and then just trys to full plow through stock at the bottom? This is the very first roughing path I want to run and I just want to go helically down the outside projection without steps or lead in outs or anything. Mastercam has a ramp option in simple contour.

[matty.fuller · Accepted solution]

2D Contour allows you to select the silhouette automatically and with a large enough max ramp stepdown you should be able to get what you want. Hard to illustrate when you haven't shared a file.

[8560000]

Got it working. Last time I checked on the ramp feature in contour, the resultant behavior made me think it was just a way of getting to the start of the official path.

Turned out the odd behavior was because of poor geometry selection. 

Unfortunately, I can't use the automatic silhouette because there are multiple bodies in the file and it just cant help but grab them all. Even when manually selecting only the body I'm interested in contouring.

Additionally, when using project in sketch, clicking the body results in some parts of the chain being missing. A glitch it seems. So I have to manually select "some features" in project and click all of the edges that matter. Then I have to select that chain in contour for my ramping operation. Cannnot figure out how to get auto silhouette to work when multiple bodies are present in the stock. Might be a glitch as well. 

I don't have permission to share file I fear.

[matty.fuller · Accepted solution]

When you select a single body for silhouette are you also unticking "Select Setup Model" above it?

[8560000]

I was not, you are awesome. 

[matty.fuller]

Cool. Most of the time computers are doing exactly what you told them to do.