Selecting multiple contours simultaneously CAM - 2d contour or 2d engrave

[Anonymous]

hallo, fusion

since last week I am just clicking and clicking working on this architectural model.. together about 20 thousand clicks only just to select  contours one by one by 2d contour or 2d engrave

please can you URGENTLY add functionality for multiple contour selection? 🙂

many thanks

alex

[curtis.chan]

Hi Alex,

Chatting with the CAM Product Manager, we do have something in the works; however, for the time being, would the selection workflow Al shows in this video suffice?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im_ywzB4ekw

Best,

-CC

[Anonymous]

dear curtis,

yes but for this you need to prepare 3d model (include all the small lines (say 0,5mm width x 0,5 mm deep in my case) form the autocad file like on this picture below and use 3d pocket clearing (or adaptive clearing) operation for milling all the small lines (or like in your solidworks CAM sample video with Engrave operation)

also if you want to mill all the inside parts of the facade (all the inside triangle or rectangle shapes) would be better to mill only contours, not all the inside material..

so you need to select the contours in CAM operation (2d or 3d) - then again you have the same problem..

there is absolute need to be able to select multiple contours respectively chains by all operations.

at once (simultaneously), not only one by one.. thats it

and that's only one simple model.. there are sure more complex models  or shapes to come

many thanks 

alex

[vpalmu]

I would also very much like to have a easier way to select the contours for engraving. In my case I'm currently working on a quite extreme example of this, as I'm trying to engrave a transmission gear list for a TOS lathe.

After vectoring with inkscape even the grid is composed of more than 300 contours.

[dustin3XKEW]

I'm in the process of making 45+ custom engraved signs for people, and each sign has 20-60+ contours.  This is the most cumbersome part of my process.  Any improvement would be a big help, and from the looks of it, this is simple compared to what the people above have posted!

[keqingsong]

This is in-progress. We will keep you posted on this in future what's news and this thread. 

[Anonymous]

thank you very much, this will really help to many users!!

alex

[timcorbett]

Where are we at with this? I'm in desperate need of a way of selecting multiple contours for 2D & Engraving. How come I can't drag a selection window? Selection Sets disappear. It's pretty frustrating. 

[evan.dudzik]

This would be phenomenal... PLEASE!!!

I just finished adding over 500 (FIVE HUNDRED) contours for a single engraving, one by one, and about 10 minutes later Fusion crashed and I have to do it all over again.

[turnersi]

Please tell me you guys are working on this..... 2hrs to select 1300 contours 😞

[evan.dudzik]

While messing around with this design, I discovered that when selecting geometry for an Engrave operation, Fusion does allow me to simply click on the sketch containing all of the contours of interest (imported from an SVG in this case).  However, the entire set of contours from that sketch is then considered one "Chain", rather than a bunch of individual contours, so I can't fine-tune by deselecting any of the individual contours - it's all or nothing.   Unfortunately, the Engrave operation inexplicably ignores a few of the contours when they were selected that way (see screenshot; it plows right through them, leaving deep grooves) - and there's no way for me to fiddle with the problematic contours.  When I instead manually select all of the same contours one by one (over 600 of them in this case), the Engrave operation works correctly.

So, what seemed like a potential partial solution to the problem that is the subject of this thread appears to not quite work as expected.

[cln.alxndr]

Where is the progress on this? There are so many project that I do that would be completed significantly faster if this existed. 

[al.whatmough]

I understand your pain!

We added streamlined sections to the 2D profiling strategies that capture many of your use cases.

The team is not applying that work to the other milling strategies.  

Face selection is useful for both 2D milling and creating 3D containment boundaries.

I expect to see something to users in the next month or two.

[video]

[cnorrick]

I'm just checking up on the status of this Idea. I was excited to learn in this thread that I can select all the lines in an imported DXF logo by simply clicking the imported sketch (thanks Evan!). That has vastly increased the speed of my workflow of selecting complicated logos. Especially text selection! However I too am having difficulty as it makes the entire dxf selection one chain without editing ability. I'm doing mostly V carving and laser engraving using the Engrave 2D. 

[Anonymous]

Dear Al,

in May 2017 you ''resolved'' this problematic with solution only for waterjet, laser and plasma cutting by 2D profile strategy.

But for us, who are using CNC machines (mills) for cutting, this brought not big help cos we do cutting using 2D contour or 2D engrave strategy. We need to setup multiple depts - what is not possible by 2D profile strategy where your team applied streamlined sections.

Would be not possible to apply streamlined sections to 2D contour or 2D engrave strategies as well?

This would be big help and problem resolved definitely for most of the users.

Thank you

Best regards

Alex

[rnarvaez20]

Hello All,

Is there any progress on this?

I also work in architecture and it is very common having many 2d contours, some for internal cuts, others for external cuts, with flat-end mills. It is not worth making 3d models from them because they are a lot and I only need a 2d cut with the mill, normally at one single depth, but sometimes at different depths associated with the different layers (sketches) of the model.

On this regard I do still not know how to apply Evan's solution which I think it would solve the problem. 

Could anyone please explain how to select all the contours in a sketch as geometry to generate the toolpath?

Could anyone also explain how to define in Fusion 360 whether they are to be cut internally, externally or over the line?

I would appreciate very much any help in this, please.

Regards,

Roberto

[chris9KEDN]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for building such a radical piece of software! Such a pleasure to use.

It would be extra fantastic if there were a quick way for selecting multiple contours inside 2D contour in the CAM workspace.

What's the status with this please?

Thanks,

Chris

[matthutchinson]

Adding to this here as I'm looking for a way to select a 'set' of points all at once (rather than individually) for drilling....any progress?

[johnnyfaber]

I don't think they are listening. This software is very painful to use. Never been so frustrated trying to perform a simple engrave operation. what takes me literally less than a minute to set up for my laser takes almost an hour on the CNC. How hard is it to allow the user to draw a bounding box around a group of lines and select them? Apparently VERY hard.

[jkl886Q5AZ]