Is it possible to treat a Duplication Pattern like separate Work Offsets?

[chrisevrard]

Hey All,

I am up against the memory limits of my machine. I recently made a Pierson Pallet for a job that had 8 rows of parts. It had 4 first op. rows and 4 second op. rows. After designing the tool paths for 1 row of first op. parts and 1 row of second op. parts, I used a Duplication Pattern to create tool paths for the other 3 rows of each.

Unfortunately after post processing the toolpaths my program was too big for the memory on my machine. I ended up running only 3 rows of 1st and 2nd op. parts for the job. A 25% waste of time!

My question is: Is there a way to treat the separate rows of parts like different offsets G54, G55, G66, etc. (without actually using multiple work offsets) so that Fusion only outputs the code for one row of parts, but applies it to 4 individual locations? 

I am aware of drip feeders and am trying to avoid this solution.

Thank you for any thoughts,

Chris E. 

[a.laasW8M6T · Accepted solution]

Hi

If you are having memory problems you might try using subroutines when you post process

That will put all the tool paths into a LBL(in the case of heidenhain), or an P9xxx sub program and then call that multiple times while shifting the start points

[chrisevrard]

Boy am I glad I asked! That took my program from 1mb down to 348K. Worked like a champ. Thanks for pointing that option out.

Best,

CE