NEW Tool Library

[veso58S5W]

😫that's first impression.
What was the reason to change?
Why mess up good things?
How you organize tools? If I want list to be by #. Or by diameters?
Renumber Tool, now I must go through several operations.

[Anonymous]

I'm forcing myself to use the new tool library. It is still SO SLOW and the fact that Metric tools aren't mixed in with Inchometric tools when you sort by dimensions is a bit lame as your 2mm endmill is now placed beside the 2in facemill.

[rhdfmail]

We just noted a bug/feature that is connected to corner-radius.

When using the horizontal-op the algoritms for calculating the toolpath seems to ignore the cornerradius sometimes.
In the corners of a pocket-ish surface it seems it decided to ignore the corner-radius and set stepover and  and  calculate from some kind of default-value, leaving cusps. It was only in the corners, everywhere else it managed to calculate it correct 

The tool was defined as a bullnose (since it seems extremly hard for the team to realize that many endmills has some kind of small radius or chamfer) 

[Mowee]

I tried, but I just can't use the new tool library...   I don't feel like it was any improvement at all.  I just found it highly annoying to use.   Yes there are some interesting additions, but the overall usability needs A LOT OF WORK.   Switched back to the original tool library for now and hope I didn't do damage to it by using the preview. 

[ltomuta]

I would like to be able to change the holder of a tool when using the "Edit tool" command on an operation.

[engineguy]

@ltomuta 

There is a "workaround" for this that may help you for now until Fusion get around to linking the Holders Library to the Tool Edit area.

What I have done is put some Holders in the Document by simply  Copy and Paste them in as tools, they then show up as a Holders list on the Left, I am then able to for example remove the 10mm Side Lock holder and replace it with the ER32 holder.

Not pretty I know but I now put holders in Documents when I create a job as habit so I am used to doing it, again, not pretty but it does work , may help you or may not, but all I have for you 🙂 🙂 🙂

Regards

Rob

[Ketherton21]

we all agree they need to scrap this whole idea or what

[Ketherton21]

cant they just add in the new features into the exact current layout they already have? Autodesk again "fixing" things

[engineguy]

@Ketherton21 

Yes, it is a bit of a pain trying to find "workarounds" all the time, I do believe that in the long term it will be a usable and feature rich part of Fusion but it doesn`t seem to have much being done to it for now:(

However there is the option of reverting to the old system so not really a major problem which may be why it doesn`t seem to be a high priority, which is understandable to be fair 🙂

I do like trying to make it work, that is really the only way that things are brought to light if many people with many ideas of how they would like to see it work get involved 🙂

Heck of a thread this one 🙂 🙂 🙂

Stay Safe

Regards

Rob

[Ketherton21]

It’s been like 2 years of “workarounds” endlessly one thing after the other. How long is the “long haul”

[cbryant515]

please add the ability to print a simple tool list plus add the max -Z depth for each tool. I don't need the entire setup sheet with the tool holders and all that extra data. the information that is populated in the tool library for the job that I am working on is sufficient. currently, there is no way that I am aware of to print just this info

[ltomuta]

You can always turn things on/off in the setup sheet.cps post-processor's
Properties to get rid of the info you don't need.

[engineguy]

@cbryant515 

Have you tried using the Setup Sheet Configuration, found under the "Manage" tab, you can have your Setup sheet with any of a number of selections available, for example "Tools Only" is one, anyway, see image below 🙂

Stay Safe

Regards

Rob

[vandyckaj]

Several complaints of mine... And sorry if I restate something. Theres almost 200 posts. 

1. The form tool feature was subpar to begin with and the new tool library made it worse. You used to be able to see both the z point for the tool touchoff and the compensation point as a separate red dot for where the program was reading the cutting edge. That is gone...

2. The multiple levels of hierarchy for organization are all completely separated and it ends up creating many duplicate tools. Its practically setup to force you into being disorganized. I want the computer to make my job easier not harder.  I did an entire post about how I think syncing should be a functionality implemented. 

3. I 100% echo others. It got prettier, lost functions, lost speed, became less usable. I'd rather have something that is rock solid and works long before pretty. 

4. Form tools again. Why isn't there a feature to be able to edit those tools? Like once it's made, its done...

5. Form tools. As of writing this, does not even work. It's broken. Compensation point totally not even registering and tool does whatever it wants to. 

5. Why can't I add holders from drawings? The whole enter the geometry point by point in the menu is garbage.  

Those are just a few of my thoughts. Seems like we keep getting these fancy new features adding for probing, part alignment etc.. All paid features. And we can't seem to nail down fundamental basic cam features, like a decent tool library, a tool path for back chamfer cutters that doesn't require me to manually offset everything with stock to leave, a tool path that will allow you to take multiple step overs with a chamfer cutter, 2d adaptive paths that are actually .stl previous operation stock aware like the 3d ones, and I could go on... 

[SendItCNC]

The tool library (and CAM) really needs to embrace the same principles as the Design workspace when it comes to referencing "things" (in the case of the tool library and CAM "things" means tools and toolholder). In the design workspace a reference to a component creates a link, so that changes to the original component are reflected in the references. If you want to create a copy instead of referencing the original you can do that (break link for example), but then changes to the original are not reflected in the new copy. Seems like a fair deal.

In the tool library, every reference to a toolholder creates another copy of the toolholder for that specific tool, and a change to a toolholder must be manually propagated to every tool using that holder. Same thing with tools referenced in CAM ops: in each setup every reference to a  new tool creates a copy of that tool. The result is, you end up with a lot of redundant copies of tools (and toolholders) after you've created a few dozen (or few dozen dozen...) CAM programs. Those redundant copies are bad things in my opinion. It becomes a big deal if you need to make a change to tools in your standard rack library (like the corner radius on your go-to 1/2 roughing end mill, or the flute length on your standard 1/4 surface finisher, or you upgrade to different tool holders, or ...). In that case, every time you go back to run a previous CAM program you have to go through and re-select the tools out of your tool library to manually propagate the tool library updates to the CAM program. That's a repetitive, tedious and error prone process -- sounds ideal for something that software takes care of. It would save a lot of time and worry (and potentially even a machine crash or two) if you could just say: apply this tool library to this CAM setup. It would also be nice to know what version (date?) of tools / libraries are currently used in a CAM setup.

Maybe our workflow is different than other folks, but this is a pain for us. The current design point doesn't seem to be much concerned with changes to the standard tool rack (revisions to tool libraries) used by existing CAM setups.

And as far as holders go, they should be parameterized so that I don't need 5 different sets of numeric values for 5 different lengths of ER-16 holders where only 1 or 2 values (out of 20 or so) actually differ for the different lengths. I guess this is analogous to the "configurations" feature in the design workspace. Every CAT40 holder definition starts out with the same repeated 8 lines defining the CAT40 v-flange, which again seems like something software could take care of instead of repeating it over and over.

The multiple presets feature seems like a nice idea, and the endmills in the sample tool libraries have lots of different cutting presets. Not sure they're the right speeds and feeds for us so how do you edit them except individually and manually? So, if we have 20 different endmills, times 10 different materials, times 3 different kinds presets, .... Thats a lot of individual manual editing.

Having said all that:  we are Fusion 360 enthusiasts!

[SendItCNC]

...following up on the matter of duplicated, redundant tool and holder definitions: just discovered that CAM templates carry their own copy of tool and holder definitions, so if you need to propagate a change to a tool through your CAM setups, you also need to edit and resave any affected template definitions.

[FrodoLoggins]

I don't ever care what the minimum Z on my tools are. What I care about is "is my end mill sticking out enough or is the ER nut going to collide with my stock?". Doesn't look like there's a way to find this out from setup sheets. It would be extremely useful to have a field that tells you how much your tool is sticking out of the tool holder. Minimum Z doesn't help when my G54 is on the bottom of the part.

[engineguy]

@FrodoLoggins 

Just open your Setup Sheet in VS or similar and modify the Length output as per the images below, very easy to do, just change the "Length" shown in Blue to "Length Below Holder" and you are done 🙂 🙂 🙂

First image is before the Modification and it does show the Length anyway, jus doesn`t say it is the length below the holder although that is what it actualy is 🙂

Second image is after the modification, clearly says Length Below Holder which is what I think you are asking for ?? 🙂

Here is the Mod to do to the code:-

if (!tool.isJetTool()) {
c1 += makeRow(makeColumn(d(localize("Length Below Holder") + ": ") + v(spatialFormat.format(tool.bodyLength) + getUnitSymbolAsString())));
if (tool.numberOfFlutes > 0) {
c1 += makeRow(makeColumn(d(localize("Flutes") + ": ") + v(tool.numberOfFlutes)));
}

Hope that`s of some use to you 🙂 🙂 🙂

Stay Safe

Regards

Rob

[ltomuta]

---

@FrodoLoggins wrote:

It would be extremely useful to have a field that tells you how much your tool is sticking out of the tool holder. Minimum Z doesn't help when my G54 is on the bottom of the part.

---

It's already there: 

[ltomuta]

This is a long thread and probably this is already in it somewhere but here it goes [again]:

We can now define the shape of the shaft for our tools but not the part between shoulder and flute. So for modeling a tool like the one pictured I have to first make tool_shoulderLength the same as tool_fluteLenght and that's not a correct representation of my tool.

Update: The forums doesn't lile images today. I uploaded it to this random site: https://ibb.co/7JGDhV7

[mattdlr89]

Have you tried using the "shaft" tab in the tool library to define this tool? I've used it for a few of our tools.

See screenshot.