Hi,

I have just received BobCad V23 Pro.

Being my first cam project on the system, I need some guidance.

The plan is to use "Z-level Rough" to rough out the cavity, followed by "Equidistant Offset" to clean up the part. The finish needs to be as good as possible. I want to use ball cutters for roughing and finishing. This means that the edges at the bottom of the cavity would be rounded, so to clean that up, I had planned to use a 3mm end mill. The snag is, I cannot figure out how to select the edges to form a profile.

Is there a more efficient way of doing this? It's going to take for ever to cut?

Hey nice part!. TO get your edges you want, make a new layer and make it active then use the "Extract edges-Single" command from the utilities menu and select that floor surface (be sure to right click and choose ok). Then hide the original layer and you should have your edges you want. If you want to pick specific edges, you can do that with the same command and be specific on the edges you want.

Hi BurrMan,

Thanks for the help. I got that figured out, but now have a different problem.

The part, as per attached file, is a combination of 2D and 3D milling. I have the 2D part figured out, with the exception of a offset problem. I'm not too concerned about that yet.
My biggest problem is that there is only one 3D surface on the whole part, and I cant mill the 3D surface alone, without cutting the sides as well. When selecting the geometry, I select only the 3D face, and the radius that runs around it, but it still cuts the sides as well, that have already been removed by profile cut before. I am trying to use the Equidistant Toolpath, but have tried other tool paths as well, none of which have worked.

What am I doing wrong?

I guess there are a couple things here. With the first part in the pdf, that surely is a 3d toolpath. With the second part in the bbcd file, Some may say "why 3d?". Just cut it 2d and get your fillet with the tool. But, there may be something more I missed like a draft angle or something.

The other thing is to remember is that the equaldistance toolpath has a "boundry" setting so you can use geometry to create a boundry that contains the toolpath.