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I'm currently working on blend, and I would love to get feedback from everybody who has tested it.
As I understand it, it is currently inconsistent, and basically failing on too many examples. It would be really great if you could post any failing examples you have in this thread, or send them to me directly, so we can make sure that we fix the issues.
It would also be good if you could post examples of where it gives a bad result, and an explanation of what you would want instead in those cases, or cases where you think it gives a good result, that we should try to get in more places.
Thanks,
Björn Johnsson
Sr. Software Engineer for HSM CAM
Bjoern Johnsson
Principal Software Engineer
you're limited to two rails; but those two rails can be made from infinite line segments..
It's probably a good idea to delineate them down to two specific rails, but certainly shouldnt be limited to single entities.
@Rob.Lockwood wrote:
you're limited to two rails; but those two rails can be made from infinite line segments..
It's probably a good idea to delineate them down to two specific rails, but certainly shouldnt be limited to single entities.
Understood... i should have clarified that.
A bigger issue at the moment, is in the datasets I've created, I can't get the toolpath to generate across more than one face.
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
I think these should be cutting moves... and not linking and ramping/plunge moves. See attached.
And with the circular condition, the toolpath breaks down, then reforms lower down the fillet:
Both of these scenarios fail to generate at all in Inventor HSM.
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
@Rob.Lockwood wrote:
attached file from earlier today that I spent a few minutes attaching some blend toolpaths to. The first job is what I wound up running on the actual part, though it was a quick project to get a probe mounted, so the operations are far from ideal.
Each operation has notes..
I'm finding Blend quite reliable for groups of clean quadrilateral based surfaces, even if they have occlusion from the main surface, which is a big plus.
But multi-axis version is failing unless the tool can be tilted clear to the surface normal along the path..
And rails still REALLY need more flexibility, as otherwise non-quad surfaces are pretty much useless.
@Rob.Lockwood the interesting thing about the toolpath failing in multi-axis if the tool isn't allowed to tilt to the surface normal... is that it handles the occlusion in Multi-Axis Blend5... once the tool reaches the occlusion, the surface normal would be more than 90 degrees. Not by much, but by some. Maybe it has an angle tolerance, or the surface normal angle is calculated as some kind of average over the face? Dunno.
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
you can already make different datasets so to speak.
So one face with two drive curves, and another non-touching face with two drive curves.
So we do need to big box if you ask me.
Laurens Wijnschenk
3DTechDraw
AutoDesk CAM user & Post editor.
René for Legend.
I suppose the tooltip would take care of it anyway
What do you mean by a non touching face?
What do you mean by a non touching face?
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
You made it sound like blend now can only do one string of surfaces at the same time. So one set of surfaces, one left guide curve, and one right guide curve.
But it can do multiple.
Laurens Wijnschenk
3DTechDraw
AutoDesk CAM user & Post editor.
René for Legend.
@Laurens-3DTechDraw I don't see any 'non-touching' face examples here.
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
@BjoernJohnsson here's another example of the issue @Rob.Lockwood pointed out with the Max Tilt Angle limit causing the toolpath to break down if the tool can't reach the normal angle of the surface. It would be reasonable to use a 60 degree angle in this example to keep the head away from the table and still access the geometry. But it skips all of the highlighted area:
I LOVE the quality of the lead in, lead outs and linking in the majority of cases with Blend. very nice. It really is a beautiful toolpath, I can't wait for this to be rock solid, very exciting!
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
I thought I'd try to create a toolpath using the Curve on Face tool in Inventor. But no dice. So I thought I should try to split the face using the 3D sketch elements, then use the edges of the face for the guide rails... but that also didn't work. See attached.
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
@scottmoyse are the faces that I selected to be machined touching each other? No.
So I have 1 blend, with non-touching surfaces to be machined.
Which means I have more than two rails I need to select.
Where I understand that the way selections work in Inventor and how they show those selections it might be good to not have them in one selection box. In HSMWorks I don't think it would bring more ease of use but more trouble. Because how are you going to find in what box you selected which rail if you want to change something in a couple of weeks time?
So I have 1 blend, with non-touching surfaces to be machined.
Which means I have more than two rails I need to select.
Where I understand that the way selections work in Inventor and how they show those selections it might be good to not have them in one selection box. In HSMWorks I don't think it would bring more ease of use but more trouble. Because how are you going to find in what box you selected which rail if you want to change something in a couple of weeks time?
Laurens Wijnschenk
3DTechDraw
AutoDesk CAM user & Post editor.
René for Legend.
Thank you for all the comments, suggestions and models. I really appreciate that you're willing to help us make this feature as good as we possibly can. I will keep an eye on this thread, if you have any more questions, suggestions or models. I will also post new results when I have them, and would appreciate comments on those as well.
Thanks,
Björn Johnsson
Sr. Software Engineer for HSM CAM
Bjoern Johnsson
Principal Software Engineer
I think I have found a memory leak in the surface initialization in Inventor HSM.
See this video. The scallop generates in seconds and the blend uses over 20GB of memory in the end and crashes inventor.
Laurens Wijnschenk
3DTechDraw
AutoDesk CAM user & Post editor.
René for Legend.
@wheels600 wrote:
Is Blend Beta useable in Fusion at this time?...My heights tab funky at this time. No top height or bottom height option.
See Al's answer on that:
@al.whatmough wrote:
@LibertyMachine We identified a UI issue in Fusion that is preventing the current BETA of Blend from working. We are in the process of correcting this.
If this was not the case, you should be able to test in all products.
Laurens Wijnschenk
3DTechDraw
AutoDesk CAM user & Post editor.
René for Legend.
Thank you, I will look into it.
Björn Johnsson
Sr. Software Engineer for HSM CAM
Bjoern Johnsson
Principal Software Engineer
Just a quick observation; the first and last passes of a Blend op seem to exist directly on the surface boundary; In a high percentage of cases, this results in two effectively wasted passes- If you consider using Blend on a standard 90* fillet, the positions at horizontal and vertical are already established, and generating a pass where the contact is at those positions is waste...
I'm a bit curious if there are situations where this isn't the case; off of the top of my head, it seems the logical solution is to offset the rails by half the stepover, but i'm curious what others think here.
@Rob.Lockwood wrote:
Just a quick observation; the first and last passes of a Blend op seem to exist directly on the surface boundary; In a high percentage of cases, this results in two effectively wasted passes- If you consider using Blend on a standard 90* fillet, the positions at horizontal and vertical are already established, and generating a pass where the contact is at those positions is waste...
I'm a bit curious if there are situations where this isn't the case; off of the top of my head, it seems the logical solution is to offset the rails by half the stepover, but i'm curious what others think here.
Would it make sense to have the option to have the first contact curve 0.0x, 0.5x, or 1.0x the stepover away from the selected contours?
Björn Johnsson
Sr. Software Engineer for HSM CAM
Bjoern Johnsson
Principal Software Engineer
@BjoernJohnsson wrote:
Would it make sense to have the option to have the first contact curve 0.0x, 0.5x, or 1.0x the stepover away from the selected contours?
Björn Johnsson
Sr. Software Engineer for HSM CAM
I think so, yes; It may be a case where one of those three solutions is correct-enough 90% of the time, such that there's no reason to expose the option within the standard UI, though an advanced parameter would be appreciated.
I can't get anything to generate in this file anymore. I don't understand what I'm doing differently to previously when I could.
Scott Moyse
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RevOps Strategy Manager at Toolpath. New Zealand based.
Co-founder of the Grumpy Sloth full aluminium billet mechanical keyboard project
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