Idea: Simulator "Momentary Engagement" report

[billostratum]

I ruined a $1500 slab of walnut today taking a too-heavy cut in a Contour roughing path. ☹️

I'm sure I'll eventually be familiar with the dangerous paths and areas, and deal with them better. So far, I've been burned by Contour, Pencil and 3D Adaptive taking deep, full-width cuts.

It would seem like the simulator has information during a toolpath about bit engagement area, or chip load, or volume per second.

What would be perfect for me is a graph, over one-second periods, showing volume taken (or other metric). Or even just the max per-second report.

Bill

[programming2C78B]

3D adaptive will never take a too-heavy cut, unless you aren't modelling everything properly. There's nothing in the program that won't be noticeable inside your simulation! Just because it's CNC work, doesn't mean that the program doesn't need as much as care and second-thought as if you would be routing it by hand. 

Its too easy with wood to be complacent and just slap some templated toolpaths on a model and not go over everything with a fine tooth comb. 

[DarthBane55]

What you are asking for is part of g-code simulators.  We have that... the sim alone is about 12k, plus the machines, that varies between 1500$ to... a lot, depending on the complexity of the machine.  At that price point, you can tell it to alarm out when a tool has exceeded the max volume it can handle (set by you in a parameter).  If you want a fancy graph, this is an additional module costing another 10k on top (tool optimization).

This request is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy out of what Fusion can do (correct me if wrong here Autodesk people), but you are not being realistic.  You need to pay very close attention to details when cnc programming, this is the very nature of this job (or hobby).  We all make mistakes, and they can be very costly indeed, but I suppose that is how you learn to get better.

[billostratum]

I absolutely agree. My point is that an inexpensive guardrail would help new users become expert users more quickly (and with less wasted material).

And I do believe that it would be inexpensive, although I could understand why it would not be a priority.

Bill

[billostratum]

I have to disagree on how far out of scope this is.

The Simulator is already doing exactly this work. Each time you click the "Next Move" button in the Simulator it is calculating how much material to remove so it can display material remaining as the result of that move. The Play button is simply a continuous sequence of "Next Moves".

I know it would take a bit or work to surface this data in the API, or a bit more work to surface the data in the UI.

One simple way to produce the "graph" would be to display "heavy" cuts similar to the way gouges and collisions are displayed. Instead of red, use another color to display when a move is higher than some threshold (requiring a new parameter in the Simulator Display panel).

Bill

[DarthBane55]

Someone from Autodesk should confirm this, because I highly doubt it calculates the volume removed.  It is purely a graphical simulation.  You should see the computer going nuts when it calculates the volume in the g-code simulator, they dont calculate it for nothing, and you have to enable it, because your simulation crawls.  Hey, maybe Autodesk figured out how to calculate this in a completely different way, but until they confirm this, I believe it is purely graphics, no volume calculated.

I also believe that the effect you are after, which you said the new users would become experts faster with this function, would actually go the very opposite way.  New users will rely on this function to stop thinking for themselves what makes sense and what does not.  It does not make them experts, it makes them amateurs, forever, because never able to see what makes sense.  But hey, I'm old school, I believe that in order to be a good CNC programmer, you have to have been running a machine for a number of years.  I know not everyone agrees with me, but in my opinion, a programmer that never ran a machine before is most of the time guessing, and definitely will make expensive mistakes along the way, this is for sure.

I can already see it in this forum, many request demanding "can you make the software think for me" (not literally).  The skills are going down with each passing year it seems to me.  Maybe it's for the best, let AI do everything for us, that's the future right!  😬

Not ranting against you btw, just saying what I think out loud, everybody has the right to disagree with me or you, doesn't matter really.

[seth.madore]

@DarthBane55 I hear where you're coming from, I hold similar views. Mistakes such as this are readily visible in the Simulation if one takes the time to review it.

That said, I've reached out to some folks who may know more the technical side of things and whether this is anything we're even collecting. I'm skeptical of that, fwiw.