Newbie- bobcad ver21 help

[GITRDUN]

I am learning to use bobcad version 21. This is my first 3d drawing and cadcam software so im still on the bunny hill.
I am having trouble with getting the generated program to make a finish pass which follows the contours on X and Y. When using the planar tool path it runs across on X untill it reaches a contour and then pulls up on z. It doesnt arc around the countour or follow it at all to blend the seperate cuts together. It leaves a space of material where the tool doesnt touch from one pass to the next. It will however follow a contour on Z axis and leave a nice smooth radius.
Can anyone help me out here? There has to be a way to do it i just dont know how. Need to create a finish pass or simply blend it together while its roughing it.

[Jim Estes]

I was just browsing this forum and notice that noone replied to your post here. Did you get any help with your problem?

I was thinking today about Bobcad. I have been using BC as my primary cad and cam software since version 17. I have heard many different opinions of BC, some good, some not so good. Today I was thinking about it and I had a thought.

Many years ago when I was in school, in an advanced level course requiring the use of a calculator for most of the work. Most of us went out and bought ourselves TI-35 scientific calculators. There were those few people who had to be different and went out and bought a top of the line Hewlett Packard calculator.

Now, I once tried to use one of those to do some simple work, boy was I in for a surprise. I couldn't even do 2+2=4. The problem wasn't that the calculator was broken or cheap or flawed in any way. The problem was that I wasn't "HP literate" as someone had once pointed out.

That's how I feel about BC. Many people learn to program using Mastercam or some form of Autocad. And when they purchase a program for themselves they select what is affordable which everyone must admit, Bobcad is affordable.

The problems arise when they compare BC to MC or AC, and it is not the same. It cannot be the same, BC would get sued for that. They have to be different, and that is part of the reason it is affordable.

When you first get BC, there is a learning curve, and for someone who has never used a CAD/CAM program before, the curve is very steep. BobCad and the tech support guys at BC take a lot of flak and heat because of inexperienced users.

With my version 20, BC sent a nice thick book. Since I had been using BC for a while I thought the book wasn't necessary. However, as I advanced and learned to use the more advanced features of BC, I noticed that I was constantly referring back to that book. Also, if I couldn't find the answer in that book, I would search this forum, or the BC support forum for a similar problem and see if I could find the answer already there. If I couldn't find the answer, I would post a question, and usually there were several people willing to help me.

I also went a little further with this, when I found an answer to my problems, I would make a note of it in that big book. As thick as that book is and as much detail as there is in it, there are still some situations that require a user to be "Bobcad literate".

I have used a more expensive, more popular program and personally I feel that for the cost, I am willing to spend a little more time in the book.

Some of the things I have learned to do have actually been very helpful. BC works much better if you will only work with the smallest peice of the puzzle as is necessary. When I work with complex solids, I will seperate the surfaces and solids into sections (i.e. top of the part, bottom, boss details, rib details, etc. etc.)
This helps when I start modifying solids. If there are less surfaces to work with, BC seems to do much better.
Also, when creating the solids, make certain that the lines that are used to create the surfaces are trimmed and there are no doubles, BC has a very useful feature that will get rid of those pesky doubles.
Another thing I do religiously is to save my work. I know BC has an automatic feature for saving your work, that's not what I'm taking about. That feature is great for a power outage or PC crash, but what about when you need to get that piece of geometry back that you deleted yesterday when you were drawing that part? What now? Well if you had saved a file of the early work and named it oh, say, WORK_1, and then after you get some of the solids done, save a new file as WORK_2_SOLIDS. This way, if you remember that you need to create another feature using some of that geometry that you used to create your solids, it will be there.
I also do this with my layers. When I get ready to do a BOOLEAN operation, such as a BOOLEAN-DIFFERENCE, I will acutally copy both solids, and then Change the attributes of those solids to another layer, then blank them out and then paste back in a copy of those solids. This way I still have the unaffected solids if I need them.

One more thing I do is to not stitch too many surfaces together into solids until the part is finished. I have noticed that BC sometimes can create surfaces from bad geometry, but if you try and unstitch the surfaces sometimes they disappear. If for some reason this happens, I can go back to a previous saved file and retrieve that lost piece of the puzzle.

This probably isn't the place I should have posted this, but I thought someone needed to reply to your post.

You might have better luck getting an answer if you post an attachment showing what you are trying to do and what is happening. You can take screen shots of your problem by hitting <CTRL><PRINT SCREEN>(together) and then pasting the screen shot into a word document or even MS Paint. Then just upload it here and I am sure someone will help you out.

Jim