NX cam max number of Regions / faces for 3d contour operation - FIX?

[bassplaya69er]

Hi,

I am programming wooden Parts to be cut out on a CNC router,

the parts in total have over 400 faces selected for a 3d contour operation used to follow top edges of faces with a form tool, as a work around because i am using Feature detection and will be using a Round over / radius tool.

the only way i could get NX to output a tool path for all the geometry i required was to use 2 work pieces & and 2 separate operations.

there seem's to be a limit to the maximum number of Faces or regions that NX can output a tool path in one operation. no matter what i have tried with all the features selected it seems to pick a random selection of them to generate a tool path for and leave the rest

does anyone have any experience of this & know of a solution?

thanks a lot.

 

[markrief]

There is no limit that would affect your selection of faces.

From what you write, this sounds like a joB for the planar_profile operation with a user defined mill tool. There are several corner rounding tools in the OOTB library.

If this does not help, please post a picture or something to show what you are trying to do.

Mark Rief
Product Manager
Siemens PLM

 

[bassplaya69er]

hi there markrief, thank you for your reply,


Yeah ideally i would use the planar_profile operation with a user-defined tool, but as this uses boundaries rather than faces to design its machining area, i don't seem to be able to get it to work with feature based machining, i could detect the features, and teach operation seemed to work, but then when finding operations for features ( forget what the options called) operations would be created without geometry,

so as a work around i used the 3d contour operation with a ball nosed mill, using the tip as the tracking point, and set the tip as the same size as the bottom of the round over cutter, so i could still kind of check the tool path out in a simulation. i then planed to just use the round over cutter on the machine. ( it would be nice if NX just let us use user defined tools in other operations)

i don't have access to NX right now to sent pictures of the exact parts but there are like:

http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=4434b07a-ee73-4c4c-b7c8-d13db9803442&file=PART.JPG

only they are 3-4 times the over all width and depth, but with proportionally more "fingers" thanks to a nifty parametric user designed feature i made.

for now i have 5 of them in a manually nested "sheet layout" assembly ready to be cut on the router., with the end goal being that they fit together to make a box, and then eventually i would like to instance them to fill a 8X4 sheet, all fully parametric and using FBM to auto detect the joints.

it works fine for smaller parts, with less than aprox 100 of the fingers in total.

the limit that i was referring to was not the selection of faces, but more the number of regions that the 3d contour operation can output a tool path for at one time, as no matter which geometry is selected. i can't get it to do more than 100 or so regions. since i posted the question i realised that if i create a different operation ( i think i tried Z-level contour) and use the same milling_area it will output a tool path for all the regions fine. the only downside to using this operation appears to be the lack of optimised region sorting. i may just have to settle for that, as the time saved programming would probably be worth it. ( lots of custom / one off's)


any ideas?


thanks a lot.

 

[grisel360]

Did you try by selecting as boundary by curves/edges in a plane?

 

[bassplaya69er]

allowing me to use the planer profile operation easier, but would this help me teach features to use with Feature based machining?