Rotate component/object/body to fit on my CNC bed

[eisenmanguitars]

I've recently built a fretboard with parameters using Austin Shaners youtube video.  My next fretboard needs to be bigger along the Y axis than I can machine on my bed.  I tried to rotate the drawing so I could fit it on my bed at an angle, but all the fret slots stay horizontal, and the fingerboard gets skewed.  I don't plan to have this problem again, because this is kind of a one-off order, but I would like to learn.  My workable area is approx 17.25 x 24. Any tips?  File attached.

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

I am not at all competent in Manufacturing, but I think I would try to solve this there, first, since that is where the requirement comes from.  I think you can create a new Manufacturing Model:

You then have to Edit the Manufacturing Model, and Move is available there.

But, if your question is about how to do this in Design, I can help there, as well.  Next post

[jeff_strater]

OK, let's look at this from the Design side.  Say you do want to rotate the body in Design for some reason.  The easiest, most basic approach is to just throw a Body Rotate feature on the end of the design:  I would use Move, set to Rotate, and pick the origin Z axis:

But, I suspect what you did first was to try to roll back before the sketch for the fret slots and rotate the body, and this was the result:

So, I looked into that.  The root cause for the sketch not following the body after it rotates is:

the construction lines of that sketch are not projected from the body, but from sketch1.  This is a perfectly valid way to create a sketch (and, in fact, it is more stable in some cases), but in this particular case, it defeats your purpose of being able to rotate the whole model.

So, next, I went back to sketch1.  By deleting this horizontal/vertical constraint, it frees up the sketch to rotate:

That let me dimension sketch1 to get the rotation:

but, that, then, caused other downstream problems:

Hopefully this gives you some ideas about how to make changes to a design.  The real moral of the story is:  You almost have to anticipate, up front, what kind of changes you might like to make to your design, and test in those changes as you go.

[Joshua.Aigen]

Hi @eisenmanguitars, you can also change the orientation in the manufacturing set-up. There you configure the WCS (work coordinate system) I used a sketch rectangle to drive the selections but there I'm able to change X and Y based on the sketch and not change anything in the model.

Hope that helps.

[eisenmanguitars]

Wow, this is amazing.  However, I can't seem to rotate it in just the xy plane, no matter how many times I try.  I turn the wheel for the XY plane after selecting move, but it ends up skewed, like attached picture.  I just had my first machine crash...it stabbed itself looking for the top of the model.

[eisenmanguitars]

I went back and rotated on the axis of one of the upright corners, and I think it worked, I'll try machining this afternoon, thanks!